


Where the Circle Ends

by Renne



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, First Time, Gore, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renne/pseuds/Renne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the world has gone to hell in a zombie apocalypse handbasket and, in the middle of it all, Steve finds the one person he never thought he'd see again. Angst and feelings (amongst other things) ensue. Thanks to my betas laria_gwyn and shadesofbrixton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Where the Circle Ends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1864296) by [Darchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darchi/pseuds/Darchi)



> Find playlist mix on 8tracks [here](http://8tracks.com/sniffleheim/where-the-circle-ends).

Steve can hear a commotion in the alley ahead and he slows, shifting his grip on the shotgun. Not for the first time he wishes he still had his shield. He peers around the corner.

There's a man at the end of the alley, hard pressed by five of those... things. In one gloved hand he has a machete, in the other a silenced 9mm. At his feet there are a number of bodies--he's made a fair accounting of himself already--but it's clear he's not going to last much longer. There's something strangely familiar about the way he moves, something uncanny that jolts Steve's memory. Bucky, he thinks. It's Bucky.

But no. It's not, it can't be. Bucky fell to his death seventy-odd years ago; there mightn't have been a corpse to find--and god knows he looked--but Steve knew no one could survive a fall like that. Even he couldn't survive a fall like that. And if Bucky had, somehow, he'd be an old, old man by now, not this reflection of Steve's own existing youth. So Steve knows it's not plausible, but the man moves like Bucky, even looks like Bucky from this angle (a flash of memories: Bucky strapped to Zola's table; Bucky shouting "No, not without you!" over a gap too wide; Bucky in the weak sunlight, filthy and pale and drawn but alive) and Steve? Steve can't. 

He just can't. 

It's not that even without the shield and the uniform he's still Captain America, and some things never change. There is enough of his best friend in this man for it not to even cross Steve's mind to leave him to his fate. 

Steve charges into the alley. 

At the sound of his footsteps the man's head whips around, desperation scrawled across his blood-spattered face, and stunned, Steve thinks: It's... oh god. It is, it  _has_  to be--

The man's eyes widen. Then he says "...Steve?" in Bucky's voice. 

Everything Steve remembers about Bucky blazes in his memory and he stops in his tracks, the stupidest thing to do right now. He doesn't normally short circuit when he overthinks; even when distracted, the super serum enhancements usually keep his body going, independent of what his brain might be doing. It's even saved his life on occasion.

But this. This is... No. 

As Steve watches, the man-- _Bucky, it is Bucky, but how...?_ \--steps back, steps on one of the bodies sprawled on the ground and falls. The creatures swarm over him, filthy hands outstretched to rip the flesh from his body. 

"No!" Steve cries. His voice rings loud in the narrow confines of the alley, loud after Bucky's grunts and the groans and slobbering of the creatures. 

They stop in their forward surge, turning to Steve and starting towards him. He swallows and raises his gun but his gaze is again drawn past the pack to where Bucky is still on the ground, Steve watching as Bucky shoots the creature that ignored the distraction in the face, shoving the corpse off him.

Steve forces himself to look away from Bucky, to deal with the creatures shuffling towards him (they're closer than expected, they move faster than the ones Steve's been dealing with; they're... fresher, and even as a thought the word makes his stomach churn). He takes three down with ease as Bucky tackles the final one to the ground, twisting as it falls, jamming the muzzle of the suppressor up under its chin and pulling the trigger. The gun pops and gore spatters across the ground. 

There's a pause, a silence that stretches out after the echoes of the shotgun have died, broken only by the harsh, jagged rasp of Bucky's breathing. He's still crouched over the corpse, head hanging and braced on his hands, and Steve can't move, can't speak, can't do anything at all but  _stare_  at him. 

Then Bucky looks up. 

He's filthy, but the curl of hair falling over his forehead, the clear blue-grey of his eyes, the hint of a smirk that on anyone else would be a sneer--it's all painfully familiar. "We gotta stop meeting like this, Steve," he says. "You comin' to my rescue all the time, people are gonna talk." The smirk broadens because fuck, who is going to talk? Is there even anyone left?

Bucky sits back on his heels. "What? Cat got your tongue?" He pushes himself to his feet, a move that works for about two seconds before he staggers and Steve leaps forward to catch him. Steve finds himself clutching Bucky close and feels Bucky grip him tightly in return. One of them is shaking, maybe they both are, and Steve feels the swell and burn of tears in the back of his throat as he remembers all the grief, all the nightmares that couldn't be washed away with a bottle of bourbon.

 _'It's not your fault,'_  Peggy had told him, but words were hollow when all Steve could think about were the things he should have done to save Bucky's life. He might've been the Army's super soldier, might be the first Avenger with S.H.I.E.L.D., but inside the enhanced body, Steve was (is) still that boy from Brooklyn. 

"Oh hell, Steve..." Bucky's voice is sudden and broken, muffled against Steve's neck. The swagger has dropped away and he shifts, his arm tight around Steve's shoulders, his wrist a pressure against the back of Steve's neck. Steve presses his face against Bucky's hair, closes his eyes.

It's ridiculous, having this emotional reunion in an alley full of dead things, but Steve's too overwhelmed to care. He needs this. He thinks Bucky needs this. 

He... he hopes Bucky needs this.

After a moment Bucky lets out a breath and lets Steve go, pushing away a little as he steps back. His eyes are glossy and reddened (no redder than Steve's) but there's challenge in the stubborn set of his chin as he looks up.

"I looked for you," is all Steve can say, helpless. "I went back. Before they sent me after Schmidt, I made Howard take me back and I looked for you. I couldn't stand to just leave you out there all alone, Bucky. I w--" He stops, rubs at his mouth a moment with his knuckles to halt the trip of words. "I wanted to bring you home."

Bucky softens. "'Course you did," he says. He holds Steve's gaze for a handful of heartbeats before shaking his head and looking away, holstering his gun and casting about for the machete he dropped when he was swarmed. Steve wants to ask how he survived, how he can be here--now--like this, but the words catch in his throat as Bucky bends and picks up the machete, wiping the blade clean on the filthy rags of one of the corpses. He sheathes it.

"So. You coming,  _Cap_? Or you got a better place to be?" The smirk is back, accompanied by a raised eyebrow. Steve would believe the lip more if it wasn't for the still reddened skin around his eyes. 

Then Steve does something that doesn't make sense (it does) and he doesn’t know what possesses him to do it (he knows), but he takes a few quick steps forward and cups Bucky's face in his hands. Cups his face and stoops a little to close the distance, cups his face and stoops a little and presses his mouth to Bucky's and kisses him, hard and desperate with everything that he's forced down deep inside for too long. Bucky stills and Steve waits, painfully tense for the moment when Bucky shoves him away (pulls him closer). 

He does neither and Steve straightens, feeling foolish for his presumption that Bucky might feel whatever it is that Steve feels, but relieved he hasn't been rejected, too. The foolish feeling lasts less than a heartbeat when Steve sees Bucky's hand pausing in reaching for him even as he'd pulled back. Then: " _Shit_ ," and Bucky shoves Steve aside, snatching the shotgun from Steve's lax fingers. He doesn't shoot but swings it like a bat and the creature's skull caves in under the butt with a wet thud. 

"Fucking zombies," Bucky says. "C'mon, I've got a place we can go. This'll all draw 'em like flies." He thrusts the gun back into Steve's hands, absently wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist in a delicate, quick movement, before beckoning Steve to follow. 

The place Bucky leads Steve towards is an apartment tower. The bottom floors have been trashed, windows smashed out like jagged teeth. The stench of decay is strong around the doorway and Steve gags when he sees the two, maybe three rotted corpses propped against the near wall. "Why...?"

"Once the decay goes so far," Bucky says, "seems the zombies just don't want to feed on 'em, so it keeps them away. C'mon, just through here."

"Is this where we're stopping?" Steve says with revulsion.

Bucky flashes a crooked grin, before checking the magazine in his gun. Even with the protection of the rotting corpses, he doesn't lack caution and Steve falls in behind as they advance through the foyer, cluttered with rubbish and rubble to the stairwell. "Four floors up," he says. "Let's do it like it's the old days."

When Steve nods, Bucky places a finger to his lips, easing the door open. Steve advances past him and they leapfrog up the stairs. It's easy, it  _is_  like the old days, Steve thinks, as they fall into a familiar routine. It's even more instinctive than his training with the Avengers made his actions as Captain America, because this goes beyond that, back to the past that forged him into the man he is today. 

As they move past a corpse Steve's boot slips in something slimy and reddish on the stairs and he grunts, lurching forward, hand slapping out for the rail. " _Steve_ ," Bucky hisses. 

"I'm okay, I'm just--" Of course he's okay, he's Captain America. It'd take more than a slip in some vile fluids to take him down.

The look Bucky gives him is part amused, part scornful. He points to the stairwell door, a big "4" next to the wire-glass panel.

"Oh." Steve flushes. 

His embarrassment is forgotten quickly as the creak of the door opening alerts a creature--zombies, Bucky calls them, and they're a lot like the things with the same name in those movies that Clint had shown him. The thing shuffles forward in a desperate, hungry lurch and Bucky darts past him; he's the one who is quicker now, fleet footed and deft as he swings the machete. Steve raises his gun as Bucky ducks under its outstretched arm and steps around, the machete cutting deep into the zombie's throat. It pulls up short and Bucky kicks it off the blade and when it falls to the floor, he stomps hard until its face caves in.

"This way," he says, like nothing happened but Steve is a little shocked. Bucky had always been an exceptional soldier, but the sheer efficiency of this kill is something new. Steve can sense there's so much more to Bucky now than he knows: the ruthlessness, the violence and the anger; the brittle sharpness that underlies everything he says... it's nothing Steve recognises. 

At the end of the hallway next to a broken window is an elevator shaft, the doors wrenched open in a black gaping hole. Steve leans out and looks up; he can see a light four or five floors up. "There?" Steve says.

Bucky just grins, leaping across to catch the elevator cable and pull himself up, hand over hand. Steve shrugs and follows. Any grease that was on the cable is long gone. They don't quite make it to the next open door, but the light that it lets in reveals the darker square of a shaft that Bucky wriggles through. "Might be too tight a fit for your shoulders, Cap," he taunts. 

It's not. Just.

Steve's got a bit of a nervous gasp for air thing going on by the time they reach the end of the shaft because it really is a tight fit, and the hand curled around Bucky's ankle as they crawl along is both so he doesn't get kicked in the face and as something of a reassurance that Bucky is still there with him, not just a noise in the dark. 

"We're here," Bucky murmurs and Steve's fingers tighten a moment. He can see the glimmer of light around Bucky's shoulders, watches as he struggles out of the narrow shaft, catches the glint of his eyes, the flash of teeth as he turns and offers a hand to assist Steve.

There's something odd about the grip of Bucky's hand, something Steve can't pinpoint. No time to focus on it though, as he clambers out of the shaft, trying to be as quiet as he can. They're in a small plant room, and the shaft is for elevator maintenance.

"Much further?"

"Don't tell me the great Captain America is tired from a little exercise? What did they do to you while I was gone?"

It's the opening Steve has been waiting for; he can't help but blurt out: "What happened, Bucky?"

"Zombies, Steve," Bucky says. He reaches for the gate by the shaft and it swings closed on silent hinges, flipping the catch that the creatures--should they make it into the shaft--wouldn't have the manual dexterity to open. "The dead coming back to life. You mean you didn't notice?"

"That's not what I meant," Steve says. 

The sharp-eyed look Bucky throws him shows he knows it too, and he sighs, reaches out and grabs Steve by the sleeve, yanking open the door and shoving Steve through and into the hallway. "Don't want to talk about it," he says curtly. The verbal brick wall is familiar, at least. That's a relic of Steve's Bucky, never wanting to talk about any of the things that made him uncomfortable. "Go on, go."

This place must be safe, Steve surmises, because Bucky's not making any effort to keep his voice down, nor is he moving with any caution. "Okay," Steve says. "The creatures, then."

"Zombies," Bucky corrects, then pauses, thinking. "About a month and a half ago there were reports of a flu knocking people down real quick across the country. A week after that New York was put under quarantine--not like it is now, though. But a week after that, well, we got all this. Don't know why, dunno how." He heads back to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. "Where were you when it started?" 

"Must have been when I was on a mission near--in Alaska. I should still be there, but I finished the job early. The headquarters had been shut down and sealed by the time I got back and it was--well, all hell had broken loose. Then the power went down and I had no way of getting the news out." The prototype jet he'd used to travel between New York and Alaska had been sealed into the rooftop hanger along with almost all of his gear when the electricity cut out. Steve had, for a moment, suspected foul play before realising he was just bang out of luck. He still can't believe he'd missed all the signs on the flight in; the unusually high number of smoke columns and the lack of anything resembling normal New York life hadn't registered in his tired brain that something was seriously wrong.

"A bitch to be low-tech, eh?" Another three flights of stairs and Bucky flicks the catch on the door, pushing it open. "Where's your precious Avenger team?" There's something in Bucky's tone. Not resentment, not quite. But it reminds Steve of the moment after he'd rescued Bucky from HYDRA, once they'd marched back to the camp, him and Bucky surrounded by the freed men and Bucky had looked at him with an amused bitterness seeping through his pride. He'd said,  _"Hey! Let's hear it for Captain America,"_  in almost exactly the same tone. No one else had known different, they'd taken it for the cheer it was.

He hadn't heard the tone then, but he recognises it now. It hurts. 

"I haven't been able to get in contact," he mutters. 

Bucky laughs, once. "Low-tech," he repeats, pushing open the door to apartment 910.

"Something like that-- _oh_." Steve stops in his tracks, goggling at the room. The apartment has been converted to a weapons locker. While none of the toys here are any more high-tech than what could be picked up in a police station or a gun shop, the scale is impressive. 

"Like it?" Bucky turns, grinning, and spreads his arms. 

Steve forgets  _tones_  as he looks around, wide-eyed and impressed. "I--yeah, yeah I do." He picks up a repeating crossbow and hefts it. "It's the perfect... zombie hunting arsenal." He watches Bucky strip off his gloves and pick over the guns. 

"It'd want to be perfect. We worked hard to put this together for the survivors."

"We?" Steve asks archly, teasing. "You're part of a 'we'?"

Bucky stills, closing his eyes a moment. Steve instantly regrets opening his mouth when he sees the tightening of Bucky's mouth, the convulsive movement of his throat. "Yeah. I was. But it's just me now." 

"I'm sorry." 

"Yeah," Bucky says shortly. "So'm I. But there's no point dwelling on that, right?" He shrugs off the mood. "Get what you need, 'cause we gotta move."

"We're not staying here?" It surprises Steve. It seems safe enough. God knows they'd have enough ammo here to fight off the fiends of hell should they come. 

Bucky just shakes his head. "I've got a place. It's better for us to go there. There are some who won't come by for supplies if they know others are still here." 

"Fair enough," Steve says and reaches for a pistol. Hawkeye's trained him up on the crossbow, so he's confident for it to be his main weapon, but he'd like back up just in case. He abandons the shotgun; it looks well and good in movies, but you have to be entirely too close to the creatures for a satisfactory result.

He glances back at Bucky just as Bucky picks up a rifle and gently runs his fingers over the scope, then along the barrel. Steve inhales sharply as he's assailed by more memories, Bucky as his guardian angel on a dozen hillsides, keeping Steve safe. Of late nights in hideouts, sitting shoulder to shoulder as Bucky meticulously cleaned the gun, all deft hands and economical movements. 

"Besides," Bucky says, his tone lighter, "I've got something at my place I think you'll like, too."

"That I'll like? Like what?" But no amount of convincing will get Bucky to give up his secret. It never worked when they were boys, why Steve thought it would work now he has no idea. 

"You mentioned survivors?" 

"Mm. There's a couple hundred of us in this district alone. The number's falling though, between suicides and mistakes." Slinging a pack he'd filled with weapons onto his shoulders, Bucky drags open the window and clambers out onto the narrow ledge. Steve's not so sure about the wisdom of running around on window ledges seven stories up, but he'll still follow Bucky's lead. Bucky's the one with the experience here; Steve had been running on adrenaline and no real plan. His training kept him alive, in ammo and food and safety, but surprisingly nothing in the Avengers handbook dealt with what to do in the event of the zombie apocalypse which, Steve has to admit, is just ridiculous since they have contingencies for  _everything else_. He's going to have some firm words with Colonel Fury about that.

As he inches along the window ledge, he inhales sharply when he sees the zip line extending from the corner of the building to one further down the street. 

Zip lines. You gotta be kidding.

Bucky glances back at him and for a moment all the years drop away and it's just like they're on that frozen Swiss mountainside before everything changed forever. "Sometimes I dream about snow," he says, "and Coney Island. Isn't that strange?"

Before Steve can answer, he's hooked up and zipped across to the next building. As Steve grips the windowsill perhaps a little harder than necessary, tense as he watches Bucky flawlessly do something Steve's sure he's done a dozen times already since this--since whatever this is started. Then Steve notices the series of zip lines extending from various buildings. He has no doubt that they link up into a chain providing ground-free access right along the street and suspects that the stairs in each building have been blown out below the zip line level, just as getting here in this building had required being able to climb an elevator cable. 

It's a clever system of travel, even if it does send a chill up Steve's spine. 

They travel through five different buildings (Steve tense every time), each one with a different cache--ammo, food, general supplies, medicines--before Bucky indicates they need to head to the ground again. The sun is starting to descend, the late afternoon light turning golden on Bucky's skin and for a moment Steve can't look away. He's filthy, but Steve can't remember a time when he looked better. Steve wants to kiss him again and again and if that isn't the most inappropriate thought at this point in time, he's not sure what would be. 

"You all right?"

"Maybe I am tired," Steve says shortly, looking away, because he doesn't want Bucky to read anything into his expression, but also because it's true. His super-human serum-boosted muscles can go all day and night, but he's been switched on for most of the time since he returned to New York and without a decent amount of sleep and proper food his metabolism is rapidly running out of steam. 

Bucky doesn't make a smartass comment at that, just says, "Not far to go now."

And it's not far. They rappel out the window of the last building, carefully dropping the last few metres to the ground. A few zombies loiter near the end of the street, about two hundred metres away. Steve raises his gun just in case, but Bucky tugs his arm. "This way," he says. "Don't worry about them. Not worth the noise."

He starts off at a soft-footed jog towards the next corner, once again with gun in hand. Unable to prevent one last, concerned glace at the zombies at the end of the street and missing the protection of the shield on his back, Steve follows. Bucky leads him around the corner and into a street full of broken down or burned out cars, hissing, "Keep an eye out," as he slows to a walk. 

There's a new tension through Bucky's shoulders as he holds his gun ready, tension ratcheted up to an intensity level Steve's never seen before. 

Bucky raises his fist-- _halt_ \--then points. When Steve eases to his left, he can see there are two more zombies in the street near the front of a burned out car, feeding on what Steve thinks (hopes) is the carcass of a dog. He sights with his crossbow as Bucky raises his pistol. They don't even need to coordinate, history does that for them and the two creatures fall almost silently. Bucky flashes a grin and Steve can only think dumbly about how bright and handsome he is.

Then: 

The creatures swarm out of the alley without advance notice; Bucky doesn't see them and they move too quickly for Steve to give warning beyond an aborted shout. Bucky falls under their hands, eyes widening and smile falling away. 

Steve doesn't even stop to think, because if he does he knows he'll fall prey to the sudden shock of terror that he's going to lose Bucky again  _right now_. He lets instinct take over and fires a bolt through the top of the head of the closest zombie, stepping up and booting the next one in the face as hard as he can. There's the sickening crunch of bone and cartilage and its head snaps backwards with a spray of blood. Bucky's struggling with three of them pinning him to the ground--Steve sees a flash of bared, blackened teeth dripping foul saliva through long hanks of filthy hair as the creature (by god, it was a woman once) lunges for flesh. Fear bubbles up and the next crossbow bolt is off target, hitting the thing in the shoulder--nearly striking Bucky's hand as he struggles to hold it back. But the impact rocks it enough for Bucky to bring up his gun and shoot it right in the face. 

He's quick then, elbowing another in the face harder than Steve thought Bucky had in him. Steve's on the next with a leap and a bound, ripping it away from Bucky and ending it with the last bolt between the eyes. It takes a few wobbly steps forward, before what's left of its brain realises it's dead for good and it crumples to the ground. Steve hears the smack of something hard hitting flesh and whirls, drawing a pistol with his free hand, to see Bucky straddling the one he punched, pistol-whipping what's left of it to a pulp.

"I think it's dead... Hey, hey Bucky, come on." Steve tentatively touches Bucky's shoulder and Bucky rears back, staggering to his feet, raising his gun. He breathes hard, eyes wild, and it takes a nervous moment for him to recognise Steve and lower the gun. 

"Swarmed twice in one fucking day, how 'bout that?" Bucky eventually says with a humourless laugh, glancing around. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "What a day. Fuck." There's blood and other things Steve doesn't want to think about all over him, on his face and in his hair. "Come on, we're almost there." He wipes the gore off the butt of his gun on a corpse and then grabs Steve's arm, dragging him away from the corpses to a building across the road crudely spray painted with a red and white star. 

There's a dead end alley with a fire escape. Bucky strips off his gloves again and stuffs them in his back pocket. "C'mon. Boost me up, hero."

Bucky's bolt hole is on the sixth floor, and like with the other buildings, requires some extra work to get to. There's every evidence the fire escape has come out second best with some kind of explosive device around the fourth floor, and they have to scale the brick wall next to it using the handy spikes someone has driven in between the mortar. "Show me a zombie with the motor skills to climb this," Bucky says, always reaching up for the next spike with his right hand, "and I'll deserve what I get."

Still, Steve's not at all surprised to find a series of booby traps and barricades from the window to the door of Bucky's apartment, zombie motor skills or not. 

The apartment door has also been heavily reinforced, a heavy bar dropping into place when the door closes behind them so that even if any of the creatures got into the building and survived all the traps, even the weight of a hallway full of them couldn't bust the door down.

Bucky heads straight through to the living area, setting his backpack of weaponry down on the floor next to a nest of blankets and pillows. He scrubs a hand over his grimy face and sighs. "I'll find you some more blankets," he says. "There's no bed--the owner of this place kicked it on the mattress so I tossed it out the window and turned the base to firewood." Then he sees the dried blood on his hand and pulls a face. "Gonna clean up first," he mutters, more to himself than anything. 

There are four carboys of water stacked by the door, another two--one empty, one half empty--on the table next to them. "Help yourself," Bucky says, jerking his head at them. "Here's soap and a towel." He tosses the items to Steve and picks up a bowl, sloshes some water into it and strips out of his jacket, flipping his suspenders down and shrugging off his stained shirt.

Steve doesn't mean to watch. Not really. But even if he ignores the fact that he never wants to look away in case Bucky disappears again, there's  _something_  about Bucky like this, just in his trousers (though they're a little tighter than Steve's used to), his suspenders hanging loose around his hips. Steve watches as Bucky washes his skin, watches him scrub water through his hair. 

It's just like the old days, right down to the way Steve tries not to let his gaze linger on the small of Bucky's back, or on the flex and shift of muscle as he moves. There are scars across Bucky's body now that are new to Steve but they don't repulse him. He wants to know where each one of them came from, wants to know what history he missed. 

Then Steve notices the weird absence of scarring on Bucky's left arm, the way the skin looks too... perfect; he opens his mouth to ask, just as Bucky glances up and smiles. "Here," Bucky says as he tosses his towel on the table. "Got this for you. Think you musta lost it somewhere along the way. Bet you can guess how surprised I was when I found this under a pile of rotting meat." 

He stoops, picking up a large object wrapped in a torn blanket and Steve is stunned when he unwraps the shield. 

His shield. 

_Captain America's shield._

"Oh Christ," he says. "Oh  _Bucky_." He grabs the shield with one hand, reaches out and hooks Bucky in with the other. Bucky resists a moment before he lets Steve pull him close and when his arms go around Steve he feels grounded, like this is a better reunion than their first meeting at street level (like he's home). "I missed you," Steve says, his voice husky and catching in his throat. "No one could ever--none of them were--it was never the same once you were gone."

"Wow. You are damn fond of that shield," Bucky says against Steve's shoulder, laughter bubbling up in his tone. It's good to hear. 

Steve cuffs him around the ear. "I meant you, jerk." He pulls him close again, pressing his nose into Bucky's hair, his lips moving against Bucky's temple as he says, "You really have no idea." 

It's Bucky who lets go first, muttering, "Dunno, maybe I do." He looks awkward that he even spoke, endearingly so, and when Steve opens his mouth--maybe to tease, maybe not--Bucky turns away sharply, two or three quick steps to the kitchen and out of sight. Steve runs his hand around the rim of his shield absently, watching the empty doorway. Bucky doesn't come back.

Eventually Steve stops fondling his shield and sets it down by his knapsack. He hadn't been given a choice between the shield or his life: the creatures had come on him too fast. When he'd equipped enough to go back, the creatures had all been dead and shield was gone. He now knew why.

God, what were the odds? 

Steve can't help one last fond pat. "So, uh," he eventually calls, reaching for the water, "so what do we do now?"

There's a pause, banging around of pots and pans, then Bucky speaks. "Now? Dinner."

That... wasn't exactly what Steve meant. But dinner, it turns out, is a fried up canned ham and rehydrated vegetables, followed by a couple of sad looking oranges with just enough juice to make a mess. 

Steve licks the last of it from his fingers. "What now?" he asks again. 

"You're going to do the dishes," Bucky says with a grin, "then I dunno about you, but I'm going to bed."

He moves to push himself to his feet and Steve laughs, says, "No, no, that's not what I meant. I meant... here." And he gestures around them. "What happens now? What do we do now? Where do we go?"

"I can take you to the quarantine zone tomorrow," Bucky says and settles back against the wall again, propping his arms on his knees. 

"We can get there in a day?" Steve asks, startled. He'd thought... well, he wasn't sure what he thought. That all of New York was an apocalyptic zombie-riddled wasteland, populated with tiny pockets of survivors, maybe. From what he's seen, he's not sure it's that far-fetched.

"Yeah. A lot of the city is fucked, but there are safe areas that lead out to the country. I'll take you to the wall tomorrow and once your people ID you, it won't be difficult for you to get out. Hell, Cap, they'll probably think you even more a hero for it."

Steve stares at Bucky. It sounds like Bucky won't be coming with him, which is absolutely inconceivable. He has to come with Steve. They were a team, always had been and--now Steve had found Bucky again--always would be. He sure as hell didn't find Bucky in the middle of a  _zombie apocalypse_  just to let him go again. And if there's anything Steve is a firm believer in it's that no man will be left behind.

Steve will take Bucky with him even if he has to drag him kicking and screaming through the quarantine zone.

"What?" Bucky cocks his head. 

"I'm not leaving you here." The words come out unexpectedly aggressively.

"You don't need me." This time Bucky does push himself to his feet. "I sure as hell don't need you."

Steve's on his feet too, before he can even think. There's something sharp in the air and Bucky's gone from relaxed to angry in seconds; Steve might not know why but he's ready to react. "You never did," Steve says. It's not true--so much of Bucky's identity when they were kids (because they'd been kids right up until Bucky went to war) had been tied up in defending Steve from the bullies; he'd been Steve's protector, his hero, his saviour, no matter how much Steve might have denied it. He mightn't have needed Steve in the way Steve needed him, but it was a need all the same.

Even 70 years ago, in that too-short time between the rescue and the fall when they didn't know where the changes in Steve left that intrinsic part of their friendship, Steve never felt like Bucky still didn't need him in some way.

But... 

Bucky's right about it  _now_. He doesn't need Steve anymore. And Steve doesn't know what to do with that.

"No," he says, a sour taste in his mouth. "You don't need me, Bucky. But I need you--"

"You don't. You've got plenty of people now, Steve. The  _Avengers_. A whole bunch of juiced up super heroes, just like you, all ready to watch Captain America's back. You don't need an--" He stops, scrunching his face up a moment against a flicker of pain. "You don't need me," Bucky corrects himself. Below the anger there's an ugly thread of jealousy, far harsher than the kind Steve recognises from after he became Captain America. His first instinct is to brush it off as he did then, except... Except this isn't the same, this isn't Bucky being jealous of Steve's newfound form with the ladies, or the way he's passed over by everyone in favour of his best friend.

This is Bucky being jealous of others  _because_  of Steve. And frankly, Steve has no idea how he feels about that. Okay, well maybe that's not true. He feels good about it when he's pretty sure he should be feeling bad, and he should feel bad about feeling good too, but he doesn't.

"It's true," Steve says carefully, "I have a team, but that doesn't mean I don't need you, too. You're so much more to me than just back up, Bucky, and you always have been. I know you know that." He lets a hint of admonishment creep into his tone; they both know that Bucky claiming that his only place in Steve's life was to have his back is the biggest load of horse shit. "You're not replaceable."

"Is that why you kissed me?"

"What? I--what? Bucky, I don't understand--" It might feel like the question has come out of left field, but Steve knows it hasn't. Not really. Bucky was always going to ask about that, but Steve's just not ready. 

"It's a simple question, Steve." 

"No, it's not, I--"

"Why did you, then?"

"I--" Steve stops, running his hand through his hair. He's flustered now, by the way Bucky won't let him finish a sentence, but he knows that's just Bucky and how he's always been to get information out of Steve. Keep him off balance with sharp questions, don't let him think. It's been too long; Steve's not used to it anymore. 

So he doesn't even think of lying or trying to dissemble and make it less than what it was. After all, Steve's pretty sure he hasn't made enough of an argument for Bucky to change his mind and come with him, so with nothing to lose, he says, "Because I wanted to." 

Bucky grunts, his mouth in a set line, eyes unreadable. Steve hates it; he's never been able to guess what Bucky's thinking when he's like this. There's a pause and Bucky shifts from foot to foot, like he's caught Steve's nervous energy. "How long have you 'wanted to'?" he finally asks.

"For... for long enough." The years don't bear thinking. Even without the seventy years of nothing that blacks out his timeline, he's wanted to kiss Bucky ever since he could remember. If he could remember his time frozen under the ice, he's sure he'd have passed the decades wool-gathering about Bucky's mouth, too.

"How long?"

"Bucky, come on, why does it matter--?"

"How long?" Bucky repeats. He shoves Steve in the chest hard, and again, and Steve lets him; lets Bucky knuckle his fingers in the front of his t-shirt and bear him backwards until his shoulders slam up against the wall. "Tell me! How long, Steve?  _How long_?"

Steve inhales sharply; the look in Bucky's eyes, the cold fury, and the tension coiled through his body. There's no way Steve should find this at all as arousing as he does. His gaze drops to Bucky's mouth (red and wet) then back up, and he can tell by the narrow look Bucky gives him that it doesn't go unnoticed. 

He licks his lips. "Maybe there's a reason why I was no good with the dames when I was young," he says unsteadily. "Maybe I didn't want to be. Maybe there were reasons why... other than--" and he gestures to himself; not as he was now, as he was then. "Well. You remember."

"You never said anything. Why?"

"Bucky--"

" _Why_?"

"You were--are--my best friend! How was I supposed to tell you I was in love with you?" Oh shit.  _Oh shit_. That's not what Steve meant to say. Not even remotely in the same ballpark. It's the truth, every word of it (and the realisation came with the uttering), but even with nothing to lose, it isn't what Steve wanted to confess.

Bucky looks like Steve's slapped him. Wide-eyed, mouth parted in astonishment. And even though Steve's still reeling from what he said himself, he still just wants to haul Bucky in and kiss the shock away. But that's what got him into this in the first place and he's not sure Bucky wouldn't actually try to kill him. So he stays there pinned between Bucky's hands and the wall, placid but resolute. 

It's the truth and he's not going to take it back.

The moment stretches out like an endless road, like they could stay like this forever. Steve watches as Bucky closes his eyes and bites his lip. Feels the pressure of Bucky's knuckles change as he shifts his weight. Lets his eyes trace the curve of Bucky's collarbone up to his throat as Bucky turns his head away. 

He can almost see the moment the anger drains out of Bucky, the tension going out of his shoulders as he sways forward, rests his forehead against Steve's shoulder. "Jesus, Steve," Bucky mutters, shifts in closer and Steve can hardly even  _breathe_  when Bucky flattens his hands against Steve's chest, warm through the cotton of Steve's t-shirt. Steve closes his own eyes when Bucky turns his head to press his face against Steve's neck. He desperately flattens his hands against the wall behind him so he doesn't reach out.

Then Bucky turns his head further and Steve shudders when he feels Bucky deliberately press his mouth to skin. "Bucky..." Desperation bleeds into his tone. Bucky kisses his throat, his jaw, his hand skimming over the pound of Steve's heartbeat.

Then Bucky pulls back, looking up at Steve and the heat in his gaze makes Steve whimper and helplessly close the distance between their mouths. He cups Bucky's head, careful and gentle, but Bucky's not even remotely interested in careful and gentle.

Bucky kisses him hard. One arm curls around Steve's neck and  _fuck_ , when Bucky sets his teeth into Steve's bottom lip, Steve can't hold back anymore. He hauls Bucky close, groans into Bucky's mouth when he feels Bucky press up hard against him. That breaks down any last remaining barrier and he hustles Bucky back to the nest of blankets by the wall and pushes him down.

The shirt that Bucky shrugged into after his wash has tiny, fiddly little buttons, and Steve curses in frustration as need makes his fine motor skills useless. Bucky laughs. "Here, let me help you," he says, but when he moves to undo his buttons himself, Steve tugs his hands away. He pins them to the blanket. 

"No," he says, looking down at Bucky. He still can't believe this is actually happening (no regrets, he thinks fiercely,  _no regrets_ ). "I want to do it."

"Don't rip my shirt."

"Might have to, to get you out of it." The thought has oodles of appeal. A quick twist of his hands and there'd be nothing stopping him from launching a full exploration of Bucky's body. Steve ducks his head down and kisses Bucky again, sliding his hands to Bucky's wrists, grip tightening instinctively when he feels Bucky try and tug free. 

But Bucky makes it clear he's not going to let Steve push him around when he breaks the kiss with a wild grin, then just as easily breaks Steve's grip on his left wrist and uses Steve's astonishment to keep him off balance as he flips them both over. It's a smooth move, and Steve finds the sudden off-balanced feeling of someone else taking control (without him willingly relinquishing it first) intensely arousing. 

He groans when Bucky slowly rolls his hips as he unbuttons his shirt. He shrugs it off and tosses it aside, leaning forward to slide his hands up under Steve's t-shirt. Steve reaches for him, curling one hand around the back of his head, drawing him down for another kiss, letting the other roam across Bucky's warm skin.

As Bucky's fingers flick across Steve's nipple he thinks he's never quite been so turned on. Bucky's hands are just firm enough to send lightning up his spine, for arousal to pool heavy in his balls, shift and movement chafing the thick material of his jeans against his cock. His hands wander to the front of Bucky's jeans, and there's no unco-ordination now as he pops open the button and, after hesitating a moment, runs his fingers down the fly to feel the hardness of Bucky through it.

This time Bucky groans, thrusting his hips forward against Steve's hand. "Touch me," he mutters into Steve's mouth, fingers roughly pinching at Steve's nipple. 

It hurts, but it's a good hurt, and it's a spur that makes Steve draw down Bucky's fly and--oh fuck. Bucky goes bare. His cock is hot in Steve's hand, the head already wet. Steve licks at Bucky's mouth as he rubs his thumb over the head of Bucky's cock and holy shit, the way Bucky inhales sharply, the way he jerks his hips forward like he can't help it when Steve does it again. 

Then it's Steve's turn to flip them over again, tugging down Bucky's trousers. He gets them as far as mid-thigh before he leans forward, takes the head of Bucky's cock into his mouth. Steve's never blown another guy (never done anything with another guy), but he's enthusiastic, and by the way Bucky pushes up into his mouth and kneads at the blankets with shaking hands, he can tell he's not doing too badly. The taste is familiar but different. Not entirely like Steve's own taste, but not that dissimilar either. Steve decides he likes it. He likes this. Bucky hot and restless beneath him, his mouth wrapped around Bucky's cock. 

Then Bucky laces his fingers through Steve's hair and tugs him back up (Steve groans in the back of his throat; he'd wanted to see if he could make Bucky come, wanted to taste him come), kissing him deeply. He rolls them both over again, hands busy, and Steve remembers being dressed and then suddenly he's naked; there had to be a middle stage of 'taking off clothes' but he doesn't for the life of him remember it. From the moment Bucky kneels over him, that's all Steve cares about: bare skin on bare skin. 

He grips Bucky's hips and pulls him down, gasping as their cocks slip together, Bucky still damp with spit. Steve reaches down. It's awkward, he's never done this before, and he quickly ditches it in favour of rutting up against Bucky, all needy, grasping hands and desperate whines, pressing his mouth to all the skin he can touch. It's been too long since Steve last got off and he doesn't last long, one hand on Bucky's ass, the other in his hair, crushing their mouths together in a ragged kiss as his hips jerk and he spills between them. He's still mostly hard as Bucky slithers down and licks his body clean, and when Bucky turns his attention to Steve's cock he shudders and bites down on his lips. "You like that?" Bucky asks and licks a stripe up Steve's over-sensitive cock. 

Steve's eyes almost roll back in his head. "Hnnghh..."

It takes him a moment to recover after Bucky stops tormenting him, a moment to stop twitching and shifting like his whole body is over-sensitised at Bucky's touch. When he's finally managed to settle his breathing (it's embarrassing reacting like a teenager at his age, he thinks, but Bucky looks smug, so maybe it's nothing but a good thing) he can finally look up at Bucky without his eyes glazing over.

Bucky, who is so damn beautiful, kneeling over him waiting with a patience Steve would never have expected, still desperately hard. 

"Let me help--" Steve reaches out eagerly, but Bucky slaps his hand away.

"Just watch," he orders in a sharp tone that sends a shiver of unexpected delight skittering up Steve's spine. Steve grins and subsides, propped up on his elbows. His grin fades almost immediately when Bucky wraps his fingers around himself and begins to jerk himself off.

The only noise is the quiver of Bucky's breath, the slick noise of his hand on his cock, only broken by the pause as he spits on his hand again. Then again when Steve lets out a soft, involuntary whimper as the back of Bucky's knuckles brush his own cock and Bucky shudders at Steve's noise, obscenely wanton now as he groans and fucks up into the curl of his hand.

Then he snatches up Steve's hand, wrapping it around his cock so they're both jerking him off even as he falls forward to brace himself on his other hand, kissing Steve deeply. If Steve hadn't just come himself this would be the tipping point, because oh god... Bucky's cock in his hand, tongue in his mouth, desperately rutting against him before he stiffens, curls in on himself and Steve's fingers are suddenly slick with come. He can feel the pulse of Bucky's cock in his hand and squeezes gently. Bucky groans in his ear, bites down hard on his collarbone. Steve hisses at the sharp pain. 

"Don't," Bucky grunts, slumping against him, "s'too much."

It seems entirely too soon to Steve when Bucky rolls off him without a word, hauling the blankets over them. He curls on his side, away from Steve, and while Steve didn't expect pillow talk or anything, he's a little offended at how it feels like now they're done, Bucky's dismissed him. 

Right up until the point where Bucky shuffles back so his back is pressed to Steve's side. Steve grins stupidly up at the roof. 

"Hey," he says eventually. "You are coming with me tomorrow, right? ...Buck?" 

His answer is a soft snore. He smiles affectionately and reaches out, gently running his hand down the length of Bucky's skin, from shoulder to hip. Perfect, he thinks, as Bucky stirs but doesn't wake. Steve leans over, presses a kiss to Bucky's shoulder then snuggles down next to him, hooking his arm around Bucky's waist. 

So what, he's a cuddler.

Steve's woken by bright sunlight through shredded curtains and Bucky's already up and getting dressed. Steve rolls over, pulling the blankets around him and watches; there are bruises on Bucky's hips, on his arm, on his neck (those ones are hickies, Steve thinks with lazy, possessive satisfaction). He watches Bucky stretch out the kinks and pick up his shirt, the same one from last night with all those fiddly little buttons that Steve is embarrassed now he was too eager to be able to undo. 

Not very smooth. It didn't seem to bother Bucky though. 

He moves on to idly speculating how easily Bucky had been able to break his grip. They'd wrestled, before. Before the war ended, before they'd both died. It used to take all Bucky's combined strength and cunning to break Steve's hold, and even then he'd only managed it a few times. Seems he's learned some new tricks--

"You gonna lay there all day?"

"Huh?" Steve blinks. 

"I said, are you gonna lay there all day?" 

Steve considers it. He really does. It's easy to forget it's some kind of gruesome horror movie nightmare outside Bucky's fortress, when all he really wants to do is drag Bucky back down into the blankets and use his body as a playground. 

He gets one of those sly half-smirks from Bucky that says  _I know exactly what you're thinking, mister_. It feels strangely forward after all their history to return it with a thoroughly appraising look (openly leering at the strength and musculature of his body and down, following the dusting of body hair to the shadow where his jeans are still open, and ain't it a kick in the guts knowing Bucky goes bare under his jeans?). 

He's disappointed when instead Bucky shrugs into his shirt.

Steve rolls from the blankets and to his feet, telling himself fiercely that it would be stupid to feel self-conscious over his nudity after the night before (and for all the times before that, because Bucky's seen him in the altogether entirely too many times to count over the years). Besides, now he has the body he should be proud to show off naked. 

He wanders over to the water for a quick splash clean and hides a smile when he notices how Bucky's gaze follows him. If he takes a little longer to wash off, if he gives a little more attention to his abs and his thighs and his pecs, well... he needs a wash, right?

He glances under his arm to see Bucky grin. "What?" Steve says innocently. 

"Nothing," Bucky says, shaking his head. 

As he starts to dress, though, levity fades. His clothes are still dirty with blood spatters, and he can't find anything Bucky has on offer, or in the closets in the apartment to fit his size, so he has no choice but to pull on his clothes from the day before.

Bucky picks up his jacket; it's far worse than any of Steve's clothes, caked with gore. "Fuck," Bucky says wearily. "I really liked that jacket." He sighs, casts it aside and rummages through his pack, pulling out more clothes. Steve inhales sharply when Bucky shrugs into a jacket that, in reality, probably looks nothing like what Bucky used to wear as a Howling Commando, back in the 40s. But there's something about the cut, the shade of blue, and it's like a physical blow for Steve to see it right now. 

"You all right?" Bucky asks.

"I--uh. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Steve mumbles, looking away. He fusses with his boots and then with tucking his shirt in. He can tell Bucky's looking at him, but he doesn't look up. He doesn't know how to look at Bucky without his loss painted all over his face.

There are three of the zombies in the street when they exit the building, sniffing around the gore-splattered site of the fight yesterday. One of the creatures seems to sparkle oddly in the sunlight and Steve is saddened, more than anything, to see that the sun is glittering off jewellery; this thing, it was a woman once, just like the one next to it was a man, still dressed in the shreds of a business suit, the stump of his once royal blue tie still around his neck. 

Bucky touches a finger to his lips, then points to the third zombie, a little distance away from the other two, indicating that he'll take care of it. That leaves the man and the woman for Steve, and he raises his crossbow as Bucky lifts his rifle. The third zombie falls with the crack of Bucky's rifle and the other two turn, their simple minds unable to understand anything beyond  _food_. Disgusted, Steve takes them down quickly.

"I don't get how they only eat each other after they're dead again..." He looks questioningly at Bucky who shrugs and grins lopsidedly. 

"I'm not a scientist, Steve. Just a soldier."

Not 'just', Steve almost says, but bites his tongue. Not at all appropriate, not for now. That can wait for when they've escaped; it can be added to the list of all the things they need to talk about. As amazing as last night was (and he has to really concentrate not to distract himself with memories of Bucky's skin on his) it didn't solve even half their problems. 

And then Steve wants to kick himself for making more out of a simple throwaway comment than there really is. If this is what he's going to be like now he's had a glimmer of hope, he kind of hates himself for it. 

They move fairly quickly through the city--quicker than Steve had been able to travel on his own, and quicker, he's sure, than even Bucky had travelled solo. There's something about having someone there to have your back that gives them an extra edge. 

A few times they have to defend themselves, but mostly they're able to slip around any of the zombies they come across. That's until they reach an alley that they have no choice but to go through, with four of the creatures milling around and in no rush to leave.

"Wait, I got this." 

When Steve opens his mouth to protest Bucky shakes his head. "Cover me."

It's not showing off, what Bucky does. It's not like he's showcasing these new skills of brutality. It's just how Bucky is now, Steve realises. And he does provide cover--as unnecessary as it turns out to be--as Bucky advances forward on stealthy feet, machete in one hand, pistol in the other. 

It takes only four moves to take them down and the final zombie in the alleyway has barely even turned before it falls backwards, Bucky's machete buried in its throat. It all seems to happen in slow motion, a spray of blood arcing through the air like art. Bucky yanks the machete free in another splash of gore, then shoots the creature once in the face, wipes off his machete on the filthy rags on one of the corpses and gestures for Steve to follow.

There's something about this violence with economy of movement that triggers a fiercely primal feeling in Steve which hits him with a sharp stab of lust. Hard on its heels comes intense shame, because that's not who Steve is.

He scrubs his hand through his hair, misses most of Bucky's smirk and pushes past. He feels it in the itch in his palms, but he resolutely ignores the urge to shove Bucky up against the wall and take him to pieces.

"How many cities are under quarantine, anyway?" Steve eventually asks in a soft voice to distract himself, inching up to the corner. He peers around. The street appears empty. 

"No idea," Bucky says and Steve stills, closes his eyes and breathes out, because he is right on Steve's six, almost close enough for Steve to feel his breath. "The radio stopped reporting those details quickly. Before they stopped, though, I heard most of the major cities along the eastern seaboard were under some form of quarantine. Who knows how far it's spread by now?" 

Steve swallows, moving slowly around the corner. It's too late now, but he realises he hadn't really wanted an answer to the question. He didn't want to know the extent. That New York was this horror-filled disaster zone was bad enough; he'd liked it better when he could pretend it was only here.

"Why haven't they cleared the quarantine zone out?"

"They debated sending the military in to clear the place block by block. It was gonna be a major operation, but then the politicians got involved." Bucky snorts with disgust. "They were protesting the 'murder', they called it, of American citizens. I think they're worried about shooting taxpayers, but if they'd spend just an hour here they'd see that there's not gonna be a whole lot of tax coming out of these corpses."

"They don't want to rescue the survivors?"

Bucky makes a noncommittal noise. "They're scared the survivors are either infected or carriers. I've heard that each day they take a small number of those who make the quarantine zone... who knows what they do to them when they get 'em out though."

"Shh, there's two." Steve points. They're shambling down the street away from Steve and Bucky. One is missing an arm that the other appears to be carrying. Or at least, it's carrying _someone's_  arm. It's so ridiculous that Steve almost laughs.

Bucky touches his shoulder and points to an alley. "Leave 'em," he murmurs. "We can cut through there. Not far to go now, about two miles I make it."

Once they make the dubious safety of the alley, Bucky stops Steve with a hand around his arm. His grip is firm, urgent. "Steve. Wait a minute."

Steve looks at him questioningly. There's something serious in Bucky's eyes--something more serious than zombies, anyway, if it's at all possible for there to be something more serious than the decaying wreck of human beings coming back to life to try and eat you alive. 

"Just..." Bucky wets his lips. "In case something happens--"

"No," Steve interrupts, sharp with sudden, unexpected fear. "Nothing is going to happen to you. We're almost there. Two miles, you said."

"I know what I said. But the quarantine zone, it's... worse. It's dangerous. Not just because of all the zombies." 

Shaking his head, Steve says, "I'll keep you safe. I promise." 

"Steve--"

Steve turns, grabs Bucky by both arms. "I  _promise_ ," he repeats. "There's no way I will risk losing you again, James. I can't--I can't go through that again. You do everything you have to do to stay safe." He never uses Bucky's real name, but it rolls off his tongue without thought. It startles Bucky, too. 

"Can't promise you nothing--"

"You don't have to. If you don't, I'll make sure." 

Bucky grunts, his mouth thinning before he shakes his head. "Come on," he says abruptly. "Let's go. We gotta be careful here, it's like they know freedom's ahead."

Steve sees exactly what Bucky means as they cut through two empty office blocks, three lightly populated streets and then turn the corner into what looks at first glance like an absolute nightmare. There's more of the creatures in the street than Steve's seen before; hundreds, maybe. There's a meandering line of abandoned cars and jersey barriers that provide almost continuous cover to the next corner and they take it slowly and easily. Steve's not entirely sure he breathes the whole time it takes for them to cross the wide street until they duck into the alley. He is about to sigh in relief when Bucky grabs his wrist and gestures with his pistol to the three zombies silhouetted at the end. When Steve raises his gun questioningly, Bucky shakes his head sharply, points to the fire escape. 

Steve frowns. There's no way that's going to be quiet. But he trusts Bucky's lead.

It's not quiet.

The zombies turn at the clanging of their boots on the metal and shuffle towards the fire escape they'd never be able to climb even as Bucky darts across it above their heads. Steve swears as he sees Bucky bound up onto the rail and launch himself off. 

And then disappear around the corner. 

"Steve, there's a rope on a pulley," Bucky's voice comes back to him. "Trust me."

There's a reason why Steve is Captain America. Why he is trained the way he is. Why his body can react to situations the way it does. And he takes a breath, stops thinking and imitates Bucky's movements. It's easy. He pushes off the rail at just the right angle, his fingers find the rope and he swings around, landing neatly on the concrete ramp next to Bucky.

The suddenness of their escape completely befuddles the creatures in the alley, and they jog down the last length of street. It seems strangely abandoned after the last two miles. 

Then he sees it.

The barrier of the quarantine zone is a huge concrete and metal edifice that marches across the road and right through the rubble of the buildings on either side, advancing off into the distance. It looks frighteningly like something out of one of Clint's movies,  _something Evil_ , but even worse for the ground being scorched black and littered with car wrecks and charred corpses.

It's creepily silent as they approach, then: "Stop right there!"

The top of the wall bristles with high-powered weaponry. A lieutenant steps up; clearly this is the man in charge here.

Steve decides to go with politeness. "Excuse me, lieutenant--"

"Ainsley." 

"Lt. Ainsley, thank you. My name is Steve Rogers," Steve shouts. Since his thawing, S.H.I.E.L.D. had kept his identity a secret, but he can't do it now. "I'm Captain America."

There's a muffled guffaw from somewhere up on top of the wall and the lieutenant turns and scowls at someone behind him for a moment. "Anyone could say they're Captain America, buddy," Ainsley replies. 

This time it's Bucky's turn to laugh. "I'm Captain America," he mutters. "No, I'm Captain America!" It's obviously a reference to something, but Steve doesn't get it. He ignores Bucky. 

"You recognise this?" He holds up Captain America's shield, childishly tilting it so it catches the sun and reflects into the eyes of those at the top of the wall. Again Bucky laughs and even though it's really not the time for it, Steve's warmed by the affection he can hear. "Put a call through to S.H.I.E.L.D. and they'll confirm. Speak with Colonel Nick Fury. Or Agent Coulson. They'll confirm my identity."

The lieutenant snorts. "You want me to waste Colonel Fury's time?"

"Steve," Bucky says sharply, in a low voice. The shouting has finally attracted visitors, and when Steve turns, he can see movement at the far end of the street. 

"On it." Steve turns back to the wall and the lieutenant. "Tell me, Lt. Ainsley," he says pleasantly. "Would you risk it? Would you rather tell Colonel Fury you let Captain America get torn to pieces on the streets of New York by  _zombies_ , than potentially inconvenience him?"

Even from this distance he can see the sudden chagrin in the lieutenant's face. It's not that he doesn't feel for the man, because he does, he's just trying to do his job. But Steve would  _really_  like to be on the other side of that wall right now. "If you're going to place that call, Lieutenant, you'll want to do it soon, before our visitors arrive." Steve jerks his thumb over his shoulder. 

The five odd minutes it takes for Ainsley to get Nick Fury on the line feel like the longest five minutes of Steve's life. He's not good at waiting as certain death shambles up the street towards them. Bucky's casually picking off creatures from the crowd with his rifle; each one that goes down gives them a little more time as the rest of the zombies turn on the corpse.

Finally the lieutenant comes back with a satellite phone. "I have Special Agent Coulson on the line," he shouts. "I've told him you say you're Captain America. That you've got the shield." Ainsley listens to the phone for a minute. "Have either of you been bitten?"

Steve glances at Bucky and then back up. "No. No way."

"It probably wouldn't make a lick of difference if  _you_  had," Bucky murmurs and Steve frowns at him. Now is really not the time.

"Who is your friend?"

"This is Sgt. James Barnes, of the Howling Commandos." Steve just looks at Bucky; he couldn't look away even if he wanted to. "Reported KIA in the Swiss Alps in '43. The reports... the reports were wrong." If his voice catches in his throat as he says those words, he's not ashamed. He sees Bucky swallow and glance away. 

"Agent Coulson wants to confirm your identity," Ainsley says. "He wants you to tell him who the agent was who championed you to Colonel Phillips."

That's easy, Steve thinks. "Doctor Erski--" No. Agent. It's a trick question, because Abraham Erskine wasn't his only supporter. "Agent Carter. Agent Peggy Carter." And he thinks of her as she was then, not as she is now, vibrant and young and everything he wanted (and another thing he thought he could never have until it was too late).

"You wanna wrap this up, we're about to have visitors," Bucky says urgently, interrupting Steve's reminiscing. Bucky raises his rifle, picks off another four in quick succession and then reloads. 

"Lieutenant, how are things going up there?" Steve calls, raising his own gun. 

They're so busy concentrating on the zombies coming down the street that it's a shock when the creatures start to pour out of what Steve--and evidently Bucky, too--had thought was a dead-end alley.

" _Shit_!" Bucky grabs up his gun and falls back, shoving Steve hard towards the concrete wall.

"To your left," Ainsley shouts. "There's a clean room. The door is on a minute timer, and you  _have_  to be in there before it closes, Captain!" 

He looks around wildly and then sees what the lieutenant is talking about. There's a sliding steel door standing open, next to a one-way glass window. "This way!" he says as Bucky urges him on again.

"Go, Steve!" Bucky shouts. "Go, they're coming!"

He thinks that Bucky is right on his heels. That was his second mistake. He leaps through the doorway, stumbling and off balance as he turns and the door is already closing when he realises that Bucky isn't behind him. That Bucky is still a good hundred metres away and isn't even trying to make the quarantine zone. He's stopped in the street, watching as the heavy steel door shuts behind Steve.

Steve slams up against the window. "No, Bucky!  _No_!"

He sees Bucky scramble up onto a car, resting on its side by one of the half-demolished buildings. The zombies converge as Bucky flips Steve a lazy salute--so much like the last time Steve saw Bucky here in New York too long ago--and leaps for the scorched, twisted metal of the fire escape.

Steve's first mistake was not realising that Bucky never intended to come with him.

His fingers scrape against the glass. In case something happens, that's what Bucky said.  _In case something happens._  He recognises it now for what it was. A goodbye. Steve had assumed that after last night Bucky would leave the city with him, that blurting out his stupid feelings would make a difference.

No.

He slams his hand against the glass. He should have known better. He knows Bucky after all. If anything he's even more obstinate than Steve. 

In case something happens, and Steve never let him finish the sentence. In case ...what? He thinks of the look in Bucky's eyes when Steve vowed never to lose him again. Steve realises that Bucky knew then that he wasn't going to go with Steve. Hell, he probably knew when they left the fortress apartment that morning. 

No. 

Earlier.

He never intended to come with Steve at all and though it's not the time for it (and maybe never would be) Steve can't help but think of last night, them together, Bucky aroused and wanting but never anything but 100% in control. 

In control. He knew Steve loved him, heard it admitted from Steve's own lips, and Steve had never once stopped to wonder if Bucky felt the same and maybe.... maybe all last night was to Bucky was a goodbye, giving Steve the one thing he desperately wanted and never thought he'd ever get--

He's ripped from his thoughts as zombies swarm up onto the car after Bucky and he gasps as there's a metallic screech as the damaged fire escape teeters under Bucky's weight. "No, no, no, no, no." He hits the glass again, hard. "You have to help him," Steve shouts up at the lieutenant, who is watching the events unfolding in the street with interest from his position atop the wall. A couple of the other soldiers take pot shots at the zombies reaching up towards Bucky. Enough to give him a fighting chance, but not enough to escape.

Steve's infuriated by the casual disregard the military is showing one of their own sons and swears viciously. Bucky.  _He should have known_. Steve slaps his hand against the glass as a screech of metal echoes down the street. 

The fire escape peels slowly away from the wall. Steve can't breathe as he watches Bucky teeter on the ladder, watches him wrap his arm tightly around a rung and try to shoot at the zombies who've grabbed the metal railing that's now in reach. "You have to let me out  _now_ , I have to help him," he shouts. "That's an order, Lieutenant!"

"Sorry, Captain, but my orders come from far higher up than you. No one goes back out after they come in." Ainsley actually sounds genuinely apologetic, but the tone means nothing to Steve right now. "We can try and keep them off him, but you can't go out there. The door won't open until the quarantine tox screen is complete."

But Steve's never been good at taking no for an answer. All his attempts to enlist for the war were proof of that. 

So he drops the crossbow, backs up and gives himself some distance, and then hurls himself at the window. It hurts like hell and knocks the breath right out of him, but the glass doesn't break. He tries again. And again. The window is tempered glass and should be too difficult for him to smash with his body alone, but by some stroke of luck there was a flaw in its construction, a weakening of the tensile strength, and finally it shatters. Steve falls through the rain of glass pieces, just as the creatures pull Bucky from the fire escape.

"Shit!" He hears from somewhere behind, and: "That's Captain America! Go after him!" There's a claxon, sudden flashing lights, the grinding screech of metal on concrete.

Steve ignores it all. Stupidly, he'd left the crossbow in the containment room and god only knows where his pistol's gone, but there's plenty of debris lying around. He improvises and snatches up a piece of heavy metal piping, no doubt the forgotten weapon of some unfortunate who wasn't Captain America with S.H.I.E.L.D. to vouch for him, and caves in the head of the first of the creatures attracted by his breakout.

He's not sure how many he takes down, how many he leaves struggling and wounded on the ground behind him as he smashes his way through the cluster, pipe in one hand, shield in the other, to where Bucky lies motionless on the ground. He doesn't notice the soldiers coming up behind, protecting his back the way Bucky had, and the Howling Commandos had, and these days the way the Avengers did. It's too single-minded, this desperate urge to get to Bucky, to know he's okay.

The soldiers quickly establish a cordon, coldly putting down every creature still moving. 

Steve drops to his knees beside Bucky and reaches out. When he rolls Bucky over he sees the blood--real blood, from a real, living person--smeared bright red across bared skin and torn fabric, sees the rents in Bucky's flesh, sees the teeth marks. Bucky's head rests against his thigh, his eyes closed. He looks impossibly pale.

"Oh no," Steve breathes. "No, no, no..." He reaches for Bucky's shirt, intending to tear the material into a compress, but he doesn't even get a chance before he's dogpiled by Ainsley's soldiers. His cheek cracks hard against concrete and stars explode behind his eyes. Then he's hauled dizzily to his feet, held firm in strong hands.

"Here, help me with this one." Ainsley is there, gesturing for two soldiers to pick Bucky up. Ainsley unholsters his side-arm.

That's all it takes for Steve to white out with fear and fury. It rolls through him, ice cold then sickly hot as he throws himself forward, momentarily breaking free of the men holding him. More grab at him until he can't move again. He can't breathe, can't think. The image of the gun in the lieutenant's hand and the sun shining on Bucky's hair is burned into his retinas.

"No!" he rages, trying to lunge forward again. "Let him go!" If he can get free, his shield is  _right there_  on the ground; and if he can get to Bucky, there'll be no amount of bullets the lieutenant can shoot that'll penetrate it--

"Keep him back!" Ainsley barks at the men holding him. Then to Steve: "He's been bitten, Captain! You know we have to!" 

Steve's not going to let anyone shoot Bucky, bitten or not. He breaks free for a moment before again he's pulled up by sheer weight of numbers. "Sage, put Rogers down. Fury said three shots'll do it," Ainsley bellows over the commotion. Steve feels the cold press of something against the back of his neck and the painful jab of a needle into his flesh. Once and he staggers, twice and his vision blurs, three times and he's about to buckle.

"No, oh no, no no..." His sight becomes tunnel vision and all he can see is Bucky being held between two soldiers, limp and head down. "Bucky, please, come on..." Like he hears Steve's voice--maybe he does, come on, come on--Bucky's head lolls back and Steve can see the glint of his eyes under heavy lids. He sees Bucky's mouth move, forming a single word, before the lieutenant raises his gun.

He lunges forward one last time. " _No_ \--" 

There's another stab of pain and his vision goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the world has gone to hell in a zombie apocalypse handbasket and, in the middle of it all, Steve finds the one person he never thought he'd see again. Cue all the feelings when Steve discovers the truth about his best friend's history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also posted on LJ [here](http://futureperfect.livejournal.com/889017.html).

Steve wakes to pressure on his bladder. It's not the first time he's woken, but it's the first time he's felt remotely human. He's groggy but aware, and when he pushes himself to a sitting position and then swings off the side of the bed to his feet, he feels a wash of nausea and dizziness like he's been spun like a top. He's lucky to make it two or three steps before his legs buckle beneath him and he crumples to the floor. 

Even laying down Steve's head still swims and he curls up around the tight ball of nausea in his gut, eyes closed tightly. He is not going to disgrace himself. 

The door opens.

"...Cap? Are you okay?"

"Head..." he mumbles. 

Someone helps him to his feet, and he's embarrassed when he squints through the blur and realises that it's Colonel Fury. "C'mon, soldier," Fury says and helps him back to the bed.

It's a typical hospital bed in a typical S.H.I.E.L.D. medical unit, and there's a doctor there, too, one of the typical S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors who, as scientists in the other 99% of their time, look at Steve like they'd like to dissect him down to his component parts. As soon as he's back in the bed, the doctor's testing all his vitals and he's awkwardly asking for a painkiller, a pee jug and some privacy.

She does better than expected on the first. "Now, this is just temporary until the pill kicks in," she says and he feels a jab in the arm. He's painless almost immediately, and on the second and third, she passes him a jug and ushers Fury from the room. The Colonel goes without protest.

As he relieves himself, he hears quiet conversation start up in the hallway outside the door. 

"I don't understand, sir. How can he be sick like this?"

"He might be super-human," Fury says, "but he's not invincible. Even Rogers can suffer if his body is pushed hard enough. And those imbeciles at the quarantine zone overdosing him didn't help." Steve can hear the annoyance heavy in Fury's tone over the sound of footsteps. "But enough of Rogers. Coulson, what news have we got on the patient?"

There is a rustle of paper and then Agent Coulson (the footsteps) clears his throat. "Not good news there, I'm afraid, Colonel. The patient is rejecting the vector." His tone becomes thoughtful. "The report says there's something stopping the virus from invading his blood cells, like there's something more in the patient's blood samples. If anything, these results remind me of some of the markers we found in the original tests run on Captain Rogers." 

Fury grunts and Steve wonders who on Earth they could be talking about. Someone who tests similar to him? There's no one else like him. The only other person who'd undergone the treatment even remotely successfully--and "successfully" was an entirely subjective term--was Johann Schmidt. The Red Skull.

And Steve had killed him. Steve knows he'd killed him. So who else could it be?

The headache, the spinning and the nausea are creeping up on him rapidly. It hurts now to try and concentrate on the voices out in the hall, low murmurs that even his super-human hearing has difficulty with.

"What about the arm?"

"Stark's been in and disabled everything but the most basic functions. He wanted to take it back to the workshop for further study, but I forbade it. He says it's, and I quote, 'practically prehistoric' compared to what he could build, and 'highly derivative of ancient Stark technology'. But... confirms it's definitely advanced cybernetics of Russian manufacture. He was mildly impressed by the synthetic skin, but again says he could do better."

Steve hears Fury swear softly. "It's him then. But what would he have gained by keeping Rogers alive then? Not to mention getting him to the quarantine zone... Damn it, breaking this to Rogers isn't gonna be easy."

"Harder still when Rogers doesn't remember anything that happened after he arrived back in New York," Agent Coulson murmurs. 

"Thanks for reminding me," Fury says darkly.

"My pleasure."

"You want to do this?"

"Oh no, Colonel, I wouldn't want to usurp your position."

"Just as I thought."

Steve presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. What happened after he returned to New York? Was he still in New York now? 

He could kind of remember snatches of garbled conversations held with Colonel Fury in his delirium. He was in Boston now, but he didn't for the life of him remember getting here.

He remembered arriving in New York, and the lockdown at the mansion, but Fury had made it seem like nothing else of import had happened in Steve's trip from the Avengers mansion to the quarantine zone, and--and what? He'd never quite explained why the soldiers on the wall had followed his own directive and tranquilised Steve. There had been someone else, then. But who was it?

God, his head really hurts now. He presses the palms of his hands against his eyes, trying to will the pain away. The speed at which his body metabolised the injection should be a positive--his system is starting to perk up--but the pain-as-a-side-effect thing can really go jump off a cliff.

He's distracted from the pain for a moment when the door opens. Fury enters.

"How are you feeling now, soldier?"

Steve shrugs gingerly. "Been better."

"They tell me that once your metabolism is back up and functioning properly, you'll feel a lot better and you should remember everything you're missing," Fury says then hesitates, which is unusual in itself. "Anything you remember sooner would help. It's important, Cap."

"Remember about what?" Steve just manages to keep the exasperation out of his tone. 

"What happened when you came back to New York. You met someone there, d'you remember who?"

Steve closes his eyes. He  _tries_  to remember, he really does, but it hurts. He doesn't remember that, but he remembers... he remembers a shock to his system like nothing he'd ever experienced, and this is a system that's taken a lot of shocks in his time. 

When Steve shakes his head, Fury says, "The brains here suggested you might remember better with prompts." He leans forward and hands Steve a photograph.

Steve recognises the photo and the men instantly. The photo was taken in London, in 1943, only days after Steve and the rest of the men who'd just become the Howling Commandos returned to the city after the rescue mission in Austria. As for the men... it's him and Bucky, of course. Taken in the bar by a war photographer who'd heard Captain America and his men were there and slipped in with the hopes of getting a classic Captain America propaganda shot. 

Instead he'd captured two men, best friends, at the bar. Steve, all tidy in his uniform with his carefully combed hair and perfectly knotted tie, and Bucky, shirt and jacket open at the throat, dishevelled and still wearing the marks of his incarceration and torture at Zola's hands. Steve touches Bucky's face, then runs his finger down the soft-frayed edge of the photograph. He remembers slipping this photo into his suit right over his heart before his last mission against HYDRA, snugly in place with a photo of Peggy. His past and his future, he'd thought then. 

How wrong could one man be?

But that's not why Fury gave him the photo. Fury gave him the photo because he--

He looks at Fury, wide-eyed. "I met Bucky...?"

"Yeah. But do you remember?" There's an odd note of urgency in Fury's voice.

"I..." Steve looks down at the photo and tries to remember. There's something twigging his memory and he closes his eyes and tries to push the pain aside to give himself the best chance to remember. He focuses on Bucky's face, trying to imagine (remember) seeing him in New York again. What would he look like now? What would he have been doing?

Then Steve's eyes fly open and he blushes furiously as his memory clicks into gear-- _skin on skin, Bucky's hands all over him, Steve sliding down, taking Bucky's cock in his mouth, all hotslickwetskin_ \--and then it's like a cascade of recollection from there. Fury raises a brow at the blush, but Steve ignores it when he remembers the blood, the violence, and Bucky's new strange edges. Bucky flicking him a salute and then getting overrun by zombies as Steve fought to save him. As quick as his blush had come, the blood drains from Steve's face and he struggles with the blankets. 

"Bucky! Where is he?" he says, unable to prevent the panic in his tone. It had to be Bucky they were talking about out in the hall. He remembered the tests Howard Stark and his team ran on Bucky when Steve rescued him from HYDRA: Zola had tried to recreate the super soldier serum on Bucky. He'd failed: the test results had shown some similar markers to what they found in Steve's blood, but not anything enough to make a difference.

Or so they thought.

"Hold up, Cap," Fury says, and it's embarrassing how Fury can hold him down with one hand on his chest. Steve hates being weak. He hated it when he  _was_  weak and hates it even more now as the reminder it is. "He's not going anywhere in a hurry--"

"Because he's dead? Because he's one of those things?" Steve asks bitterly, remembering blood on skin. "He was bitten. That lieutenant was going to shoot him."

"He's not dead and he hasn't turned," Fury says patiently. "Ainsley didn't shoot him, he sedated him on my orders so we could bring him here--"

"On your orders? He hadn't even been bitten yet when Lt. Ainsley called you!"

"I know." 

"Then why--"

"You questioning my orders, soldier?"

Steve's mouth snaps shut and he glares at Fury. It doesn't make sense. What could be so important about Bucky Barnes that Fury would have ordered him to be taken down like he was a bad guy? Bucky might be one of the most important people in Steve's life, but--as far as he knew--to S.H.I.E.L.D. Bucky was just a sergeant from the second world war, who'd been a Howling Commando and Steve's best friend, and fell in the battle against HYDRA.

"Give me a minute and I'll explain it to you. First, I need you to answer me this: did Barnes say anything about where he's been for the last 70-odd years? Was there anything about him that seemed different to you?"

Steve scrubs his hand over his face. "He didn't want to talk about what had happened and I didn't push him. But he did seem to be... different." He casts about for the right word to describe it. "He's still Bucky, everything--everything about him is still him, but there's... more. More edges. Something... like something is broken inside him." The admissions don't come easily. Whatever the big reveal is that Fury's leading up to, he's pretty certain he won't like it from the look on the Colonel's face, and the last thing Steve wants to do is inadvertently screw Bucky over with an offhand comment.

"So you never got any idea about where he'd been and what he was doing?"

Steve shakes his head. 

Fury nods slowly, like this is what he expected. "I know he was your best friend before the war, but we have reliable evidence that since the end of World War II, James Barnes has been operating under the auspices of the Russians. Steve, Barnes is the Winter Soldier."

"No!" And at that Steve sits bolt upright in the bed. "No, he's not the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier is a Soviet assassin, a stone cold killer--" He stops, thinking of the violently efficient way Bucky had killed and how Steve had noticed it even then. Was it reminiscent of what they'd seen of the Winter Soldier before he went off the grid? "It can't be him," he says weakly.

Fury looks at him with sympathy. 

"He didn't--" Steve stops, squeezes the bridge of his nose. "There was nothing showing any allegiance to the Russians. He's--he was the Bucky I remember. My friend. My best friend. If he wasn't, I would have known. And if he was the Winter Soldier he wouldn't have saved me." He thinks again of skin on skin and he can't for the life of him imagine that the Winter Soldier would have gone to those lengths. No. It had been honesty in Bucky's hands; Steve wouldn't accept anything less.

"We're sure about it, Cap." Fury hands over a folder of photos. 

Dated across decades, most of the photographs are grainy, black and white or blurry, but there's enough of the man in each for Steve to put together the pieces. He lingers on the most recent: a screen capture taken from a video a half dozen years before. The man's face isn't visible, but it doesn't need to be. Steve recognises the way Bucky stands, the shadowed profile. And if that wasn't enough, the cybernetic arm is clear in the photo, without whatever synthetic skin Bucky's acquired since.

Steve looks at Fury in anguish. If Bucky was the Winter Soldier, it has to be past tense. Bucky's no good as an actor; the brittleness, the sense that there was something broken in him couldn't be feigned. "He had to be brainwashed. Bucky would never do any of what the Winter Soldier's done willingly."

"That may be," Fury concedes. "We've been able to establish that he was tortured--"

"That could have been Zola--"

"No, these are more recent. We ruled out the injuries sustained when he was in HYDRA's hands and from the fall. There were definite signs of recent, more sophisticated torture. However, healed injuries aside, there's still the fact that Lt. Ainsley confirmed Barnes had no intention of leaving the quarantine zone when you were rescued."

"If you'd been brainwashed into being the Winter Soldier and you knew it, would you throw yourself on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mercy? I know Bucky. He wouldn't have done that. I think he wanted to stay in the quarantine zone and see if there were more people he could help. There were food and weapons caches set up for the survivors. He was behind that. He was helping people."

Fury makes a thoughtful noise. "Possibly," he concedes. "Look," and he leans forward, elbows propped on his knees, and Steve tenses. He knows when Fury is about to ask a favour. "We need two things. We need him well and we need him to confirm his identity as the Winter Soldier. But he doesn't trust us so we can't give him the cure and he's not interested in talking to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the slightest."

"You want me to talk him into taking the medication? He trusts me. Shouldn't be a problem."

"I also need you to get him to confirm he's the Winter Soldier."

Steve stared at him. "I can... well, I can try," he says dubiously. "He's cagey about his past, but I might be able to get him to open up."

"There's no might, Cap. We need this to happen and today. He'll be given the compound he needs to fight this sickness, and then a drug that'll make him more... pliable. You get him to confirm and then your job is done."

"He's not a  _job_ , Colonel," Steve objects. "This is my best friend we're talking about here." 

"And that means he's more likely to trust you. Even if he's broken the brainwashing, it'll be difficult for anyone he doesn't trust to get the information out of him."

"If I don't do it?"

Fury sighs. "Do it the easy way, Cap. It's best for everyone." 

The easy way. Steve doesn't need to have it spelled out to him. If he doesn't get the information S.H.I.E.L.D. requires out of Bucky then Bucky'll be thrown to the wolves. The hard way. Interrogated with the same kinds of techniques that were probably very similar to what he underwent in his transformation into the Winter Soldier, making S.H.I.E.L.D. no damned better than the organisation that broke him to start with.

"I want it on the record that I don't like this," Steve says, "and that I don't agree that this is the only way."

"Duly noted."

Steve throws back the blankets and reaches for the S.H.I.E.L.D. sweatshirt on the other chair by the bed. "Let's get this done," he says shortly. There are shoes by the bed too, that he shoves his feet into as he stands. There's only a moment of lightheadedness, but that passes. He rakes his hair back and avoids Fury's gaze as the Colonel comes around the bed, leading him out of the room and down the hall. 

It's a short walk to where they're keeping Bucky in the isolation and observation chambers that Steve's been lucky enough not to need in any of his S.H.I.E.L.D. medical units. They're all full, each one with a person at a different stage of the illness--or whatever it was that caused the dead to rise again, whatever it was that Bucky had--chained to the bed, hooked up and monitored. Steve is lead to the last room in the corridor, where the doctor who had administered his painkillers earlier is standing, holding a tablet and stylus. 

"How is he doing?" Fury asks.

Steve misses her answer, completely distracted as he looks through the window. "Bucky," he whispers, reaching out, hand splayed on the glass.

Bucky looks tiny in the hospital bed, the blanket not entirely hiding the restraints at wrist and ankle. Even from half a room away, Steve can see how pale he is, the sheen of sweat on his face. The wounds on his arm and chest aren't bandaged and the black line of stitching marches across Bucky's inflamed skin.

The doctor--Schroeder is the name on her tag--touches his arm to attract his attention. "He's rejecting the vector that's worked so far on the other test patients, but we have a different compound we hope will work." 

She hesitates.

Steve glances over. "And?"

"Colonel Fury may have told you we have had difficulty administering medication. He, uh... Well, Captain, he bit the last nurse who tried. She's since responded well to treatment."

"Bit?" Steve says, his eyes widening. " _Treatment_?"

"Yes, as with all of the infected, his saliva contains traces of the virus. A bite at this stage will put the victim as much at risk of infection as a bite from a class one or two infected. So--"

"Don't get bitten," Steve says.

"Don't get bitten," she agrees with a hint of the flirtatious kind of smile he's never become used to. Steve looks at her blankly and then away. 

Schroeder presses her hand to the palm pad next to the door and it hisses open. Steve takes a deep breath and steps through and into the isolation chamber. 

The door shuts behind him and Bucky twitches at the sound of the lock, squinting as Steve approaches the bed. 

For an instant the past overlaps the present (Bucky strapped to a table, muttering name, rank and serial number over and over) and Steve says, "It's me. Steve."

Bucky says, "Steve..." but it's not in the relieved tone Steve was hoping for. 

No, he's startled, disoriented, and his eyes widen. "Steve? Why're you here...? Did they...? They didn't, they couldn't--you can't be here, you're not here. No, they'd never get you, not  _you_ , no, you gotta be just a memory in my head they can't take away--" He jerks his arms and the cuffs rattle on the handrails. His flesh and blood wrist is a bruised, bloody mess. "You won't take him away from me, you hear?" Bucky shouts at the one-way glass by the door. "You can take everything else, but you won't take  _him_!"

"Hey, hey," Steve says, his heart breaking at the desperation in Bucky's voice. He pulls up a chair by the bed and sits down, reaching out and touching Bucky's arm. Bucky subsides and turns feverish eyes on him. "I'm really here, Buck, I promise. And you're okay, you're not... you're not in Moscow. You're in the S.H.I.E.L.D. building in Boston. No one here wants to hurt you. I promise."

"Steve, no, no, I'm chained to a bed and they keep trying to pump me full of drugs. I don't--I don't know what they're going to do to me." A thin thread of fear winds through Bucky's tone and again he jerks on the cuffs on his wrists. Steve grips Bucky's arm harder.

"They're S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors and they're going to help you get better, that's all they want to do."

"Heard that one before." Bucky laughs bitterly. "'Just want to  _help_ '. Well they can't do it to me again, not--not now--"

Steve leans forward. "Who? What did they do to you?"

"Doesn't matter anymore. Those things bit me and I'm gonna die." He turns his arm and shifts so he can touch Steve's hand, his fingers curling around Steve's. "Promise me you'll put me down when I die, Steve, I don't wanna hurt anyone."

"Shh, you're not going to die." Steve tightens his fingers around Bucky's. He's never seen Bucky like this before, fever-sick and rambling. When they were kids, it was always the other way around; Steve ill in his bed and Bucky looking after him, soothing his delirium. There are no tissues within reach, so he carefully blots the sweat from Bucky's face with the corner of the sheet. "I won't let you. You just need to let the nurses give you the medicine. It'll help you."

Bucky shakes his head. "I  _bit_  a nurse, Steve. I didn't want to, but I did, I remember doing it like I remember--" He stops, eyes wide and tracking something that isn't there. His mouth moves a moment but nothing comes out. Then he shakes himself and continues, "I'm not gonna get better. I'm gonna end up one of those things."

"No, you're not, I promise you're not. And the nurse is okay, she's okay. You didn't do her any harm," Steve says gently. Another nurse inches in through the door with the syringes on a tray and a questioning look on her face. He gestures for her to come forward. "This nurse here is going to give you some medicine and--"

Bucky looks alarmed, pushes away from the nurse as she approaches the bed. "Steve--"

"No, no, no, she's not going to hurt you. The medicine will help. They've got something that'll fix you right up. Two shots, that's it." Steve tries not to let his guilt about the second injection bleed into his tone. He doesn't believe it's necessary to drug Bucky to make him reveal the truth about the Winter Soldier project. With a bit of time...

Except Fury won't be swayed and Steve is expected to get the information out of his best friend. 

"Hey, Buck," Steve says softly, leaning forward and resting his arm against the rail on the bed--close enough for Bucky to bite him if inclined, but Steve has the kind of stupidly heroic trust that Bucky won't do it. "Bucky, hey. Look at me. Just look at me. It's okay, you're good, this is going to help you, okay?" Bucky looks up at him; his eyes are bloodshot, the skin around his eyes heavily bruised in his bleached face. He flinches when the first needle enters his skin, but his eyes never leave Steve's for even a moment. "You're doing good," Steve says encouragingly.

As the nurse injects the second compound, Bucky shudders, his breath hissing between his teeth as his fingers tighten painfully around Steve's. The drug hits him almost immediately, his fingers going lax and his eyelids heavy. The way his head lolls against Steve's arm reminds him of those moments outside the wall in the quarantine zone, Bucky bloodstained and unconscious and Steve fearing the worst. 

Steve waits until the nurse leaves the room again before he speaks. "How do you feel?" he asks softly.

He expects Bucky to retort with 'How do you think I feel?' but instead Bucky sighs, nudges his cheek against Steve's arm and says, "So tired..." 

"You can sleep soon," Steve says and swallows back his own fear, the guilt, all of it. "I just... want to ask you something first."

"...Know I'd tell you anything you wanna know. Never any secrets 'tween us." 

There's something terrifyingly pliable about Bucky like this and okay, this drug is more than a little scary, Steve thinks. While he doesn't know how it'll work with the questions Bucky might have been programmed not to answer, he thinks he could ask Bucky just about anything else and get the honest, unbridled truth. The thought brings a hundred unwise questions to his lips but he quashes them. Now is not the time and it's definitely not the way he'd ever want answers. Bucky would never forgive him for it.

Steve wets his lips. Might as well get this over with. "Buck... they told me you were the Winter Soldier. Is it true? Were you?"

Bucky makes a soft, disagreeable noise in the back of his throat and turns his face away from Steve. "No, not that..."

Steve knows Fury won't take anything but an admission. He kind of hates the Colonel right now for making him do this to Bucky. "I know what they did to you," Steve says softly, rubbing his thumb across the back of Bucky's hand. "You were tortured and brainwashed, Buck. They turned you into the Winter Soldier and made you do all those things, didn't they?"

It's a brief, bitter battle, but Steve can see when Bucky loses his struggle against the drug. "Never have done it if they gave me a choice. Remember mostly everything 'bout then, remember it as me. Remember it as... like I was someone else who did those things. Wanted to do those things. It wasn't me, but--but it was. Turned me into a killing machine and then it was me who did all those things. Me. Did it all with my own two hands, Steve. Remember everything from when I was the Winter Soldier like it was yesterday." Bucky shifts restlessly. "What was that medicine they gave me? Feels like I got ants under my skin."

"It's probably just the cure working," Steve says hopefully.

"No," and Bucky frowns, making a face like he's just tasted something horrible, like he's going to be sick, "no, it's something else. It's familiar..." His frown clears as his eyes widen and his expression turns to one of horror. His lethargy is completely gone. "It's... it's truth serum," he says and recoils as Steve reaches out to him, his hand brought up short as he tries to shove Steve away by the cuff around his wrist. " _No_. Get away from me."

Desperately, Steve tries to soothe him. "No, no, Bucky, it's okay, it's not what you think--"

"It is!" Bucky says wildly. He struggles frantically against the cuffs and the bed railings flex. "How could you do this to me? Are you even--? No. You're not... you're not even Steve, are you? Steve'd _never_  let 'em do this to me!" 

Something changes in his face then, something that terrifies Steve to see. Something changes and it's not Bucky there in the bed anymore, and it's not the Winter Soldier either. In an instant Steve's reminded of the feral, mindless faces of the zombies that had tried to kill them in New York. The bared teeth, the inhuman hunger, the glazed eyes--Bucky's become whatever he caught when those things bit him. Another sharp yank and the cuff around his wrist breaks. 

Steve's off balance already when Bucky grabs him around the neck, hauls him close. He only just manages to push back enough to avoid Bucky's bite even as he feels hot, wet breath on his skin, the graze of teeth but no pain and the skin doesn't break, his hands braced against the side of the bed. Steve twists out of Bucky's grip, his own hand finding Bucky's wrist and shoving it down against the mattress even as he lunges forward to pin Bucky with an arm against his throat. Bucky writhes beneath him and Steve risks looking up from what used to be his best friend to see Schroeder and Fury rush in through the door.

The doctor has a syringe in hand and she hesitates as Bucky continues to thrash about, growling and snarling like some beast. "Do it," Fury says and grabs Bucky's other wrist, holding his arm steady long enough for Schroeder to empty the syringe into his arm.

It seems to take forever for whatever the doctor injected to kick in and then Bucky subsides and goes limp beneath Steve's grasp. He holds Bucky a moment longer before he eases up his grip, and what he sees horrifies him: Bucky's no longer breathing, his mouth slack and eyes empty. "You've killed him--" 

 _Promise me you'll put me down when I die, I don't wanna hurt anyone_. If Bucky's dead, that means... Oh god. No, no, he couldn't do it, could he? Could he kill Bucky, if what was left inside that head had nothing left of Steve's Bucky, if what was left was a monster?

"Just wait," Schroeder cautions as Steve reaches out. He glances up at her, not understanding the hopeful look in her face. Bucky was... was  _gone_  and she had the nerve to look at him like that?

Then--

\--Bucky blinks, his chest spasms as he draws in a shuddering gasp of a breath. He blinks a few more times and then his disoriented gaze catches Steve's. Bucky's mouth twitches like he's trying to smile, and it's heartbreaking to watch him try to give Steve that reassuring, lopsided smirk, before his eyes sink shut and he slumps against the pillow, unconscious.

Steve sags against the broken railing in relief. 

That... that wasn't a zombie, that was Bucky. The look in his eyes was all Bucky.

After a moment the relief gives way to anger and he looks up at the Colonel. "You did this. It's your fault he nearly died, because you wouldn't let me do this my way."

For once Fury doesn't respond when one of his team blows up at him, and that's more than enough to cut through Steve's rage. If Fury isn't responding, he's accepting the accusation for what it is. Steve sighs and lets his anger go. Drops his head again. 

Looks at Bucky, who looks if not at peace then at least settled. Steve reaches out, pushes sweat-damp hair from Bucky's forehead the way he wouldn't have dared to do if Bucky were awake.

"He'll be okay," Fury says. "Here." He presses a sterile swab into Steve's hand, gestures to where Bucky nearly bit him.

Steve wipes his skin clean of any trace of Bucky's saliva. "You can't know that."

"The shot brought him back. That means it's working with the first dose. His fever will have broken when he wakes and he'll be back on his feet by the end of the week."

Steve closes his eyes. He doesn't want to think of what would have happened if the first dose hadn't helped Bucky, can't bear to think that if it hadn't then Bucky would be dead right now, and then alive again (for a given value of alive). He focuses instead on Bucky waking and back on his feet. Except...

Except.

It would be one thing if the only issue here was Bucky being bitten by zombies. But it's not. The Winter Soldier hovers like a spectre over Bucky's head and Steve knows it'll haunt Bucky forever; the spectre of everything broken in him, all the sharp edges and corners that now make sense. All Steve's joy has gone out of knowing Bucky somehow survived the fall in Switzerland, buried by the knowledge of what he's become.

And regardless of torture, of brainwashing, Bucky was the Winter Soldier and S.H.I.E.L.D. will want their pound of flesh. Steve says as much to Fury, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

"He will be interrogated," Fury corrects. "If what you say is true, and he's overcome the brainwashing and there are no sleeper commands planted in his head, then we'll decide what to do with him."

"Prison, I imagine?"

"That'll all depend on what we find. And given the allocation of resources at the moment, we can't get into his head 'til this whole... zombie situation is sorted. So until then, I'm releasing him into your care," Fury says, scowling darkly as he jabs his finger at Steve. "I want you to keep him under surveillance 24/7. I'd prefer 100% house arrest, but I know you, Cap, I know you'll do what you have to."

At first Steve wants to protest; Bucky probably hates him now. He's not going to want Steve around. 

But then, as Steve sees the pointed look Fury is giving him, he understands.

Fury's giving Bucky a chance by giving Steve a chance.

True to Fury's word, Bucky's fever is gone the next morning and he's weak but up and moving about within days. He leans on Steve as they take a shuffling turn around the room. "Well this is embarrassing," he mutters, tightening his arm around Steve's shoulders.

"Could be worse," Steve offers.

"How?" Bucky snaps.

"At least your gown has a back on it now...?"

The look Bucky shoots him at that is just about the sourest Steve has ever seen on him. "C'mon, no urge to bite me?" Steve tries again, because he's desperate to see Bucky smile, to know he's been forgiven. (And even with all that, he still flushes a little bit, because while he means 'bite' in the zombie kind of way, he remembers 'bite' in the set of Bucky's teeth against his collarbone, his hand slick with come.)

"No urge to bite," Bucky says through gritted teeth. "Need to sit down." Steve helps him back to the bed, and he sinks down onto the mattress with a sigh. "Why are you even here, Steve?"

The question stings, for all it's said in a tired, defeated voice. 

"Because I want to be," Steve says, trying with a hopeful smile. "You're my best fr--"

"Well, I don't want you here." 

Oh ouch. That hurts.

Steve purses his lips. As soon as Bucky was well enough to be released into custody, Fury would expect Steve to deal with every aspect of what amounted to the home detention of an ex-Soviet assassin. Joy. 

Either way, Steve knew they had to get past this sense of betrayal Bucky had that was linked to a history Steve still didn't entirely understand. It was bad enough that Bucky looked at each dose of medication with suspicion and more than a little fear; any trust he may have had in S.H.I.E.L.D. to look after him had been blown completely out of the water by Fury pushing the truth drug angle. Steve quickly found there wasn't any point in trying to talk to Bucky once he'd been given any medication; all he'd say was his name, rank and serial number like he was a prisoner of war again. 

"Tough. I'm staying with you whether you like it or not." Steve leans against the wall, folds his arms across his chest. 

When Bucky is considered fit enough to be discharged, they move into an apartment block that Tony Stark had helpfully bought and leased back to S.H.I.E.L.D. for the Avengers to live in while the New York mansion was still off limits. The penthouse suite they're staying in is exactly the kind of ridiculously overwhelming modern monstrosity Steve's come to expect from Tony.

Bucky takes one look around as Steve ushers him in the door. He sniffs, mutters, "Adequate," before stomping off to find the bedrooms. His stomp would have been infinitely more impressive, Steve thinks, had he not needed to stop and lean on his hands on the dining room table for a breather.

Steve sighs, slings his and Bucky's bags over his shoulder and enters the penthouse. 

Bucky claims the smaller second bedroom, though whether that's out of consideration or due to the fact that the room is closer to the front door, Steve doesn't want to guess. He supposes he should be more anxious about Bucky being closer to the escape route, since he's staked his reputation with Fury on being able to keep Bucky, but frankly, right now it's difficult to care; and besides, Steve knows Tony fully kitted out the building with all the bells and whistles, alarms and surveillance needed before S.H.I.E.L.D. turned the Avengers loose. 

Steve sets Bucky's bag down outside his door, knocks and says, "Bucky...? I've left your bag out here, okay?" He doesn't expect an answer (which is good, because he doesn't get one) and when he reaches the master bedroom he slumps down on the bed that's enormous even for him with an exhausted groan. 

About thirty seconds later his cell phone buzzes. It's almost too much effort to roll over and pick it up.

It's Tony.

"Tony, hey," he says. "Great to hear from you."

"Same with you, buddy. Glad you survived 'escape from New York'. How's the place? Big enough? Listen, I'll be up in a few days, I just gotta sort out a few things here first and then take Pepper to Malibu. Don't worry about moving out of the penthouse when I get there, Fury's already filled me in on your guest and, man, is he pissed at you. Fury, I mean. I think it's even possible he's more pissed at you than he's ever been at me. Anyway, it's been great to talk, see you soon."

Steve looks at his cell phone with bemusement, before dropping it to the mattress. That was even more manic than usual.

His stomach growls and Steve curses his stupid super-soldier metabolism, because while all he really wants to do is sleep for about a hundred years in this ridiculously comfortable bed, he knows he _needs_  to eat, that not maintaining himself isn't doing him any favours, particularly when he's still recovering from the neglect he recently put himself through.

He groans and pulls himself to his feet, stumbling off in search of a bacon sandwich.

The routine they settle into is uneasy at best. Steve's lucky to get about a dozen words out of Bucky on any given day and he ends up taking Bucky with him whenever he leaves, because... well, it's not because he doesn't trust Bucky to be left behind alone, it's just that Steve knows Bucky hates being stuck inside for long periods; he gets stir-crazy, and at least when they're at the S.H.I.E.L.D. office Bucky can feel useful, sharing the information he's gathered about the zombies with the agents there and doing some good.

That's until Steve finds out from Colonel Fury exactly how the information is going into the reports.

"An... 'anonymous source'? You've got to be kidding me. Colonel, Bucky is--he's doing good here, proving he hasn't got any of the Winter Soldier left in him  _and_  helping with all the information he can supply about the zombie plague and you're not letting him claim that?"

Fury folds his arms across his chest. "It doesn't prove a goddamn thing, Cap."

It takes all Steve has not to break things. He can tell Fury knows it too, by the look in his eye. He clenches his hands tightly into fists. He is going to prove Fury wrong if it kills him.

Steve's pretty sure Fury knows that too, as he lets Steve storm out of his office.

In fact, he's pretty sure Fury has him pegged on a lot of things, like Steve realising that babysitting really isn't for him but knowing he has to do it anyway, because the alternative--Bucky in a S.H.I.E.L.D. containment facility--is unthinkable. 

And he feels bad for thinking like that about Bucky ( _babysitting_ ), because he thinks about Bucky a lot; thinks about what he used to be like without the shadow and the weight, thinks about how even though he was broken in New York, Steve didn't know the half of it, thinks about how he's nothing like what Steve remembers and  _everything_  like it as well.

But he doesn't want to feel like he's looking after Bucky, keeping him safe, or maybe keeping everyone safe from him. He just wants things to be normal. Or as close to normal as is possible. 

Which, okay, it's ridiculous because for them 'normal' is before the war and they are so far from that it's not even the same century. Yet there was something of it in New York and Steve would be happy with that again (more than happy, really, if it meant a chance to feel Bucky's skin on his again, and god that is such a selfish thought sometimes Steve can't even stand himself).

That's the normal he wants. 

Instead the 'normal' Steve gets is being out and about on the Boston streets. It's difficult to reconcile what he knows of the epidemic spread across the country with how it is here, but so much of Boston has miraculously escaped infection that--apart from the rations, curfews and road blocks with health checkpoints--it feels almost like the city could be going about its normal routine. 

And it feels so wrong.

Whenever he goes out with Bucky, he can tell Bucky shares the sentiment. He's tense and curter than ever until they get to the safety of a building, and then some of the tightness unwinds from his shoulders.

After a while Bucky's tension feeds back into Steve so badly that he risks a solo trip.

Of course, Steve should have known that the apartment would be empty when he returned to the building. "Bucky?" he calls, even though he knows the answer. It's their fourth day and Steve had hoped if he ducked out early enough, while Bucky was still sleeping, he could run a few errands and get back before Bucky even knew he was gone. Steve feels a sick jump in his stomach to think that he was wrong, and worse, that Bucky might have just... slipped out and vanished. The lock wouldn't have been any real impediment to him, after all. Steve's not entirely sure he wouldn't have been able to disable any of the other security measures either.

He rubs his hand over his face and sighs. What on earth is he going to tell Fury? 

There's a sudden sharp crack from somewhere above, and Steve jerks his head up. That was a gunshot. He bangs out the door and bolts for the stairwell. The apartment block's rooftop has a swimming pool and a small bar area and he slams through the door and out onto the astroturfed deck, looking around wildly.

Steve finds Bucky on the rooftop with Clint. 

They've each got a high-powered rifle in hand and they're taking pot shots at what Steve desperately hopes is one of the quarantine zones down by the river. "There you are," he says, hiding the relief in his voice. Never mind the fact they shouldn't be doing it, Steve's just glad that Bucky hasn't bolted.

Clint looks up questioningly and then half rolls onto his side to peer behind him, popping the plug out of his ear. "Oh, hey, Cap," he says and grins. 

Bucky ignores him, pulling the bolt to reload, sighting, and squeezing the trigger.

"Turns out your boy here is a real crack shot," Clint says appreciatively, slapping Bucky on the shoulder. 

"I'm not his boy," Bucky says sharply as Steve mumbles, "He's not my..."

Clint's brows quirk up. 

"I'm just going to, uh, head back downstairs," and Steve points towards the stairs, then quirks his finger at Clint, "Clint, if I could just have a word--"

"He understands," Bucky interrupts coldly, once again sighting down the rifle, "that I'm a prisoner here until S.H.I.E.L.D. decides otherwise. He'll see me home safely."

Steve bites his lip, hands curling into and out of fists--helpless--as Clint shrugs ('hey, what can I do, right?') before popping Steve two thumbs up. "Leave him with me," he says, and Steve nods once at the promise in his face. Steve mightn't have talked much with the other Avengers about his unexpected roommate and the limits on the missions he can take because of it, but they know enough. Steve has no doubt Fury filled them in on the rest.

Smartly, he turns on his heel and heads back downstairs.

(It's ridiculous, because a. they've hardly been on speaking terms since they moved in, and b. he's only on the roof, but with Bucky gone the apartment feels stupidly empty. Steve slumps down at the kitchen table and wonders how it all came to this.)

Later, Bucky returns with Clint in tow. Clint's hand rests on Bucky's shoulder as he delivers the punch line to what is undoubtedly an off-colour joke and they both laugh. 

Steve scowls. His pen punches a hole through the papers he's completing. It's a report on the New York situation, as S.H.I.E.L.D. likes to call his escape. He refuses to gloss over Bucky's role as he's been ordered to; no matter what they think Bucky's become, Steve knows better. Even the anger-filled man he currently has to put up with almost 24 hours a day is not the Winter Soldier. Steve mightn't have had to come up against him in a fight (and there's no words for how glad of that he is, because it's  _Bucky_ ), but he's read the reports, heard the stories. 

No, Bucky as he is now has nothing of that. He's a man trying to piece a destroyed life back together. 

So Steve will tell the truth. He will put it down in as many official documents as he can, put his name to the words and give Bucky the credit S.H.I.E.L.D. would deny him.

He'll do everything he can for Bucky, even if Bucky doesn't want him to. 

When Tony arrives just after lunch, Steve's idly leafing through another file Fury had sent him.

It's on the virus that caused the necroplague, what they'd found out about it (in layman's terms, from one soldier to another) and Fury's speculations on the virus as a biological weapon despite the fact that none of their usual suspects have come forward to claim responsibility. Although it's an unexpectedly interesting report, Steve's currently more concerned with maintaining the illusion of busyness, while keeping an eye on Tony as he bears down on Bucky.

"You must be Bucky Barnes," Tony says grandly, sticking his hand out. "Tony Stark. I've heard an awful lot about you." He flicks a glance at Steve and continues, "'Bucky this, Bucky that'... Now I meet you, I can understand why." He looks Bucky up and down, speculatively. In Tony's defence, while the look is probably just him sizing Bucky up, Steve sees it as more and immediately prickles, scowling at Tony over Bucky's shoulder.

Tony returns it with an innocent look.

"Tony Stark," Bucky repeats, looking down at his hand, still within Tony's grip. "So... you're Iron Man. I've heard of you. You remind me of your dad."

Steve winces a little, but Tony retorts smoothly with: "So, you're the Winter Sold--"

"All right," Steve barks, shoving to his feet. "That's enough."

Tony releases Bucky's hand  _finally_ , and it's not that Steve was concerned about that because he wasn't, not really, except this is Tony and Bucky already seems entirely too warm towards him when they've only exchanged half a dozen odd words. 

And... okay yeah, look, Steve is entirely too jealous of how his friends--his modern day Avengers friends--so far have all seemed to have this easy... thing with Bucky, whereas he won't even speak to Steve at all unless he absolutely has to. Steve just wants his friend back, but Fury's truth serum has probably put paid to that forever.

Because apparently Bucky can still hold a grudge like in the old days.

Steve had just never imagined it would be against him.

"How's the arm doing?" Tony asks, blithely ignoring Steve's teeth-grinding glower of menace.

Bucky shrugs. "I'm not gonna lie, I know it's not right."

"You still have use of it, though?" Tony asks. "When Fury asked me to take a look at it, I made sure that you'd have all the normal range of movement. It's not bad work--for the Russians, anyway."

"But you could do better?"

"Of course. I, uh, technically I'm forbidden to 'do better' by S.H.I.E.L.D. at the moment, but I've got some ideas I think you'll like." Tony grins. "To make the most out of having a metal arm. And I can definitely do better than the fake skin and muscle." He pokes at it, and Bucky doesn't recoil. In fact, he snorts a wry laugh and Steve turns away, stuffing the papers from the file back into the folder. When Tony says, "In fact, I have a prototype in the car," Steve's not at all surprised and doesn't even bother to protest. 

Tony will do what Tony will do.

And Bucky...

"Really?" Bucky says with animated interest.

If Steve was going to put a stop to it, it should have been here. Because he can't see how this could go anywhere but badly, and Tony Stark is not an unstoppable force of technology no matter what he thinks of himself. 

Except Steve doesn't. 

He lets Tony run down to his car and bring up the prototype arm, lets Tony get out his toolbox and clear the dining room table and set it up like it's some kind of workshop. He lets Tony complain that this would be much easier if he could just take Bucky back to Malibu where he could do this properly, and even lets Tony chase him from the dining room to the living room, moving the files and papers from the dining table to the coffee table without disturbing a single page. 

He lets Tony, because he can see the sympathy in Tony's eyes though he'd never say it, and although Tony can be the most self-centred, self-obsessed jerk Steve has ever met, he's doing this as much for Steve as for his own ego.

Mostly though, Steve lets Tony do this because Tony, like this, reminds Steve of Howard. And it isn't until now, until right this moment, when Steve understands how much of his life he lost by not being around to grow old with the ones he loved most. Howard. Peggy. The Howling Commandos. 

Steve's sure if he'd had the time with these people he would have been able to grieve properly for Bucky when he fell at the second-last hurdle, the way he thought that any grief, when given enough time, should be able to heal. For the first time Steve finds himself helplessly wondering if this--having Bucky like this--is worth it. It's not a worthy thought, and he feels ashamed it even crossed his mind, but...

No, he tells himself.  _Stop_.

He picks up the file again, this time with the intention of actually reading the thing. This is information he needs to know, and there's no point dwelling on things he can't change. It's a suitable distraction, and between the murmur of Tony and Bucky's voices in constant low conversation and the file, time passes quickly.

He glances up when he hears Bucky complain noisily.

"It's not my fault all the connections are backwards! Jesus, this whole thing's a mess. I'm going to have to build you a whole new connection at this rate."

"Happy for you, pal. But I'm still gonna need an arm 'til you do that."

"Oh for crying--I'm not going to leave you without an arm, Barnes. Let me just fix... This would be so much easier if I had all my tools." 

"Lots of things would be so much easier if--"

"Don't you finish that, Barnes," Steve hears a familiar warning tone in Tony's voice and smiles. As long as he doesn't think about his own relationship with Bucky, there's something stupidly heart-warming about listening to the bickering in the dining room and the rare lightness in Bucky's tone.

The lightness carries through right until Tony declares that the prototype arm is satisfactorily attached and fine-tuned to normal working order (even Tony wouldn't risk Colonel Fury's wrath at this point by giving the arm abilities a normal person wouldn't have). 

Once Tony's left though, Bucky once more becomes taciturn, retreating out onto the balcony with the day's newspaper and one of the notebooks he'd brought back with him on their last visit to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Steve leaves him be for a few hours, still working through the information Fury gave him, before he eventually realises he's spending more time glancing out the window at Bucky and less time working. He drifts towards the balcony.

Bucky's not reading the paper, though it sits on the table next to him, an empty cup of coffee defence against an errant breeze. Peeking out from under the edge of the newspaper is the notebook, pages full of cramped script. Bucky stares out into the distance and Steve takes the opportunity to do some staring of his own. While slow to regain his full stamina, the physical rehabilitation work Bucky's been doing between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the building's gym is doing wonders for his physique; the plain white t-shirt he's wearing pulls nicely across his shoulders, his jeans skim the line of his thighs in ways Steve deeply appreciates.

But all the rehab is doing is healing Bucky's body. There's been no healing of their friendship and Steve hates this estrangement more than anything. They were too long apart; Steve wants the familiar camaraderie that they'd had back in New York again. That easy echo of their former lives.

Eventually Steve sighs, steels himself and knocks on the glass door. Bucky glances up. "Oh," he says and, "hey." He rubs absently at the healing bite scar on his arm, metal fingers against flesh. 

"Do you mind if..." and Steve gestures to the empty seat next to Bucky. 

"Uh... yeah, sure. Fine."

Steve drops into the chair, propping his feet up on the edge of the handrail. Even though, really, he's not that big, he feels like he's dwarfing Bucky in a way that reminds him of when Bucky first knew him as this, as Captain America. Like he's a giant filling all the empty spaces in a room, a conspicuous lump with a neon arrow above his head. He puts his feet back down.

Bucky looks at him, one brow raised. It's about as much emotion as Steve's gotten out of him for days.

"So. Um." Steve fidgets and picks at an invisible thread on his own jeans. "They've started sending the military into the quarantine zones nationwide with the cure," he blurts, for lack of anything better to say. "It's too late for those who are already dead, but they've got a plan to round up the survivors and evacuate them."

"Mm." Bucky leans forward, elbows resting on his thighs. "I guess I'm proof it works," he eventually, reluctantly says, like he's realised he should be part of the conversation. "What are they doing about the dead ones? The zombies, I mean."

Heartened that Bucky made the effort to reply, Steve says, "Same problem as when I asked you back in New York why they hadn't done anything. Politicians claim killing the creatures is murder. They think that if there's a cure for the bitten, there should be a cure for the dead. But... they're dead, right, and rotting. So I don't know what these people think would be left if they could cure them."

"Maybe they just want a humane solution?" Bucky suggests. Steve's about to point out that sniping from the rooftop is hardly a humane solution, when he notices for the first time in what feels like approximately forever, that Bucky's almost smiling at the bitter joke. Almost. 

Steve almost smiles back.

"But what if they want to round 'em up, gas 'em like it's humane, like they're cattle? You know who else thought gassing was more humane?" Bucky's not almost smiling anymore. His gaze is 70-odd years distant, back in a past of blood and dirt and misery, before the Howling Commandos and Captain America changed his war. "You know the first thing I did when I finally got my mind back? I tried to find out what happened back then, in the war, not the--not what we were doing. Not how that ended. I figured that with no HYDRA ruling the world, it had to be good, right? But the war... he killed himself. Hitler, I mean." He shakes his head. "Shot himself and a handful of days later the war was all over. Would you believe it?"

"That's what I heard, too," Steve says quietly. It's not a good conversation, but it's something. It's Bucky talking without Steve feeling like he needs to crowbar the words out of him. 

"What a fuckin' waste. All those lives." Bucky rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Not gonna lie, kinda glad I wasn't around for the end." He stares at his hands for a long moment and Steve can't help staring at  _him_ , at the way the sunset flushes colour into his skin, filling the dark hollows under his eyes until Steve could almost imagine that this is the Bucky he's always known. Always loved. 

"There's something I gotta ask."

Unconsciously, Steve straightens. "Mm?"

"I know this thing with--with getting rid of the zombies is important, but why'm I here with you? Why haven't I been locked up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. max-security jail somewhere? After all the things I've done--"

"It wasn't you."

"You think that'll cut it? 'It wasn't me'?"

"You were brainwashed, Buck. It's not your fault."

"Not my fault. Yeah, and I bet it'd never have happened to you. Not  _Captain America_." Bucky's mouth sets in a harsh line, the anger in his expression unmistakeable. But Bucky's not mad at him. No, he's mad at himself.

Steve forces himself not to repeat 'It's not your fault', because he knows they're empty words, a mindless platitude.  _He_  knows it's not Bucky's fault, but Steve also knows Bucky. He'll blame himself (though he'll never, ever say it), blame some flaw in his character that made him the one they could exploit to such ends. Wonder what the weakness in him is, that meant he could be broken down so completely, down to his atoms and rebuilt into whatever monster the Russians wanted. 

And if they could do that to Bucky, one of the strongest people Steve knows... no one could have stood a chance.

"You're not in prison because I vouched to Fury I would look after you. And that you weren't a threat. I couldn't see them send you off for things you--James Barnes--never did. Once this walking dead business is done, S.H.I.E.L.D. will still want to interrogate you, but--"

"Good."

" _Good_?" Steve says incredulously.

"Your S.H.I.E.L.D. buddies need to get into my head and find out if I'm actually free," Bucky says. "I went rogue once back in the 70s, y'know. And I don't remember how I ended up like--like this, this time, so how do I know the switch isn't going to flip back again?" He suddenly looks haunted and shoves to his feet. 

Steve straightens, reaching out. "Bucky--"

But he's gone, notebook in hand, the newspaper fluttering to the floor. Steve bends and picks it up, looking after Bucky. And he'd thought he'd had it difficult, trying to adjust to all the changes in the world between what he knew and what was now. At least he's only ever been the one man, looking for the right body to reflect how he felt inside. He can't even imagine what it must be like to know that not only did a cold-hearted killer live inside your head, but you were always there along for the ride, too.

Jesus, Bucky.

When Steve heads back in, dropping the paper on the coffee table, the door to Bucky's room is shut. He taps on the door. "Buck...?" he asks tentatively. 

"Leave me alone, Steve," he hears Bucky say in a tired voice after a long pause. 

Steve presses his hand to the timber, rests his forehead next to his hand and closes his eyes. He's never felt so helpless, so useless before in his life. "Okay..." he says. "Okay. If you need anything, I'm here for you."

Silence is his only reply. He sighs, steps away from the door, not looking forward to filling yet another evening with worry, with all the uselessly circling thoughts and fears he can't do anything about. Eventually he gives up and goes to bed, with the thought that sleep has to be better than this. 

Though he doesn't know what it was that woke him, Steve's out of his bed in a flash, strung out and alert. He can almost feel the sudden burst of adrenaline coursing through his veins as he listens intently. He pads softly to the bedroom door, slipping through it and out into the living room. 

What on Earth had it been?

Then:

He hears it again, a low, agonised cry this time followed by a heavy crash. It comes from Bucky's room, and that's all Steve needs to know, nearly kicking the door down in his rush to get in. 

He expects... well, he doesn't know what he expects. 

Whatever it is, it isn't the room half trashed, the bed sheets spilling to the floor. Light pours out of the bathroom door and Steve hears the sound of retching. "Bucky?" he says, picking his way around the mess on the floor towards the bathroom.

He doesn't miss the bottle of whisky on its side on the table by the bed, only a finger remaining, drops spilt around the neck.

Bucky's on the floor of the bathroom, hugging the toilet. 

"Oh, Buck," Steve sighs, and steps forward, crouching down. He reaches out, but he's barely even touched Bucky before Bucky is flinching away from him with a hiss and a glare. If the look in his eyes wasn't of a man thousands of miles and decades away from this moment, Steve might feel hurt. 

"Get away from me," Bucky snarls and Steve does, he goes. Not far, just to the bedroom, where he flicks on the light and straightens up the bedding, picking up the weird abstract painting Bucky had knocked off the wall and standing it safely behind the door. He straightens the dresser, which now wears a great gouge and crack in the top, no doubt from Bucky's new cybernetic arm. It mightn't have any more power behind it than Bucky's normal strength, but Steve knows how strong Bucky is, and it's still made of metal. Steve's not entirely sure how long it would take him to get back up if Bucky decided to seriously rearrange his face.

There's a glint of metal on the floor and Steve stoops, picking it up. The chain slips through his fingers and his eyes widen because he recognises it from a lifetime ago. His hand shakes as he palms the dog tags, tight 'til he feels the edges bite into his skin. He doesn't even know how Bucky could still have them; Steve would have thought that any link to that past would have been destroyed.

He stands the bottle of whisky up and reluctantly lets the chain slip through his fingers, puddling on the tabletop next to the bottle. He carefully sets the dog tags down on top, aligned, fingertips lingering against the ridge of Bucky's serial number. He knows the numbers as well as his own.

The toilet flushes and he turns just as Bucky comes out of the bathroom.

He stops, looking warily at Steve.

"Are you... are you okay?" Steve asks.

"Yeah," Bucky grunts. "It was just a nightmare." His gaze flicks to the dog tags and Steve sees the faint spasm that crosses his face. "You need to go." The cold look is all Bucky now, but still Steve's not upset. He goes, like he's asked, reaching out and touching Bucky's shoulder as he passes. 

It's something that Bucky doesn't jerk away.

The next morning when he returns from S.H.I.E.L.D. (without a mission, Steve finds Fury seems to take great pleasure in picking his brains and making him sit in on governmental meetings on the zombie crisis) the apartment is once again empty. This time there's no sound of gun shots, but Steve doesn't think Bucky's fled either. He acts instead on his hunch, and heads for the stairs. He's not wrong; Bucky and Clint are up there again, but this time they're not taking shots at poor creatures from the rooftop. Instead they're...

Steve stops.

His mind goes blank and it takes him a heartbeat too long to decipher exactly what they're doing, half-naked on that mat they've spread out on the astroturf. Then Bucky flips Clint and has him face first on the mat, arm twisted up at a painful angle. 

"Haha  _ow_ ," Clint says. "Okay, okay, Buck, I get the picture." 

Bucky releases him and Clint rolls over and pushes himself to his feet. He touches a spot of blood on his lip. "I still think I could take you," he says. "I was holding back. You're still, y'know, weak--weakened. From the whole zombie thing. And your arm is... new."

At that Bucky snorts, stretches his arms and loosens his shoulders. He doesn't look worse for wear from the previous night's whisky offensive. "No holds barred, then?" he offers with a smirk that Steve knows well. If Clint says yes, he's going to end up in a world of pain. Steve's trained with Clint--he's good at hand-to-hand, but Bucky...? Bucky's better.

"Sure," Clint says, bouncing on his toes.

To say Bucky systematically takes Clint to pieces would be a slight understatement. In less than two minutes Clint is on his back on the mat, out cold. Steve swallows, lets his breath out slowly, because that was stupidly hot and just. No. He shouldn't be thinking about that at all, because no.

And yet...

Bucky straightens, nudging Clint with his toe. Then he turns, looks at Steve, and of course he's known Steve's been there the whole time. "You wanna go, too?" he asks, but the play has gone out of his tone in favour of challenge, bordering on something dark and ugly.

Steve steps forward, out of the shadow of the stairwell and shrugs out of his jacket. "Yeah," he says, knowing the answer before he even says it, "yeah, I do." He's pulling off his boots when Clint comes to, groaning as he rolls over. 

"You're rough, man."

"Just how you like it." And that smirk is back on Bucky's face as he bends, lending a helping hand to pull Clint to his feet.

Clint sways a little then squints at Steve. "Oh, hey, Cap," he says, rubbing his head. His eyes widen when he realises Steve's stripped down for business. He looks between them--Steve's bulk, Bucky's wiry strength--and whistles. Steve knows on the surface it looks like anything but a fair fight. On the surface.

"You ready?" Bucky asks. 

"Yeah."

While Steve doesn't expect Bucky to pull his punches, he's a little surprised by exactly how vicious Bucky is, even compared with how he'd fought Clint. 

He can see clearly all the changes between his best friend and the man the Russians gave back to him (let go, escaped, whatever happened), and he shouldn't be surprised because all this was foreshadowed in New York, but he is and it saddens him. It's not sparring like the old days; Bucky swings his metal fist with intent and Steve has to work to avoid taking a serious hit. He grabs Bucky's wrist on the follow-through, but Bucky uses his own momentum, hooking his ankle behind Steve's and they go down. 

Steve twists, throws Bucky off and he's back on his feet in a flash. They exchange a few blows, and Steve's glad Bucky doesn't naturally lead with his left otherwise Steve would be in for all the hurt. Not that there isn't enough power for some fairly significant pain as is, of course. He sways back from Bucky's swing, follows it up with a jab of his own that Bucky ducks under, launching himself at Steve. For the second time they hit the mat, this time Steve flat on his back and Bucky on top, pummelling him with his fists.

It's difficult for Steve to avoid, and he takes three hits as he realises that he's stupidly using the same moves he used to use when they trained together; Bucky would know them like Steve knows them, it's body memory now, even after all these years. So he tries a move he learned only recently and... Bucky counters it, but he counters it the way Steve has to counter a lot of Bucky's moves in return: with thought and training, not instinct. 

Steve has the edge he needs.

Rather like Bucky had been with Clint when Steve had arrived on the rooftop, it ends with Bucky face down on the mat, his metal arm twisted hard up behind his back. Steve has his other arm pinned with his free hand and a knee digging right into Bucky's kidneys. Unlike Clint, Bucky still struggles for a moment until there's a decidedly unhealthy sounding crack from his cybernetic arm. He makes an astonished noise of pain and Steve releases him immediately. "Sorry, I--"

 _I'm an idiot._  It's not what he was going to say, but it's what he should have said, because Bucky does this... this  _thing_  and suddenly even though his arm is almost useless, he has Steve pinned, one knee jammed hard against Steve's throat, foot pressed down on one wrist, hand on the other, and when Steve tries to twist his body to throw him off, the move just increases the weight on his throat til his vision fuzzes around the edges. He gives it one herculean effort, gets his arm free from under Bucky's foot and punches Bucky hard, harder than he ever meant to.

Bucky falls back against the mat, groaning as he pushes himself up onto his one good elbow. He grins humourlessly at Steve, licking the blood off his teeth. "Not bad."

Steve's voice is rough in his throat. "Yeah."

Clint, who has been watching in silence the whole time, says uneasily, "You guys are messed up."

"You don't even know the half of it, pal," Bucky says and pushes himself to his feet, supporting his cybernetic arm. For a moment--like it's for old time's sake, that shared nostalgia of the same words said to Dum Dum or Morita--he flicks a glance at Steve and almost smiles, before he looks away. He snags up his shoes, picks up his t-shirt and limps for the stairs.

"I'm glad he's on our side now," Clint says, watching Bucky leave. "Need a hand up?"

Steve lets Clint pull him to his feet. "Hey, you mind if I ask--" Clint starts.

"Don't."

"Just wanted to ask about New York. Y'know. This century." Steve looks at Clint and Clint spreads his hands. "I want to know what it's like on the ground in there. Fury hasn't really had any reason to send us in, what with the fact that the standard pesky supervillain isn't going stop and wait for us to clean up a zombie plague."

Steve swallows. How do you explain that these... these creatures were once people? Living, breathing people, just like him, just like Clint, who once had their own lives and stories and now they're things, decaying in their facsimile of life. Things that just want to kill and eat. "Be glad of it," Steve says. "It's an absolute nightmare. You can't reason with these things. They just want to kill you and eat you, Clint, and they were people. Those creatures you were shooting down by the river? They were  _people_  once."

Clint looks fascinated and disgusted and a little ashamed. "And Bucky was bitten by one of those things?"

"Several, actually."

"Fuck."

"Yeah." Steve takes the shirt Clint hands him and shrugs back into it. "Where are you off to now?" he asks, picking up his boots. They head for the stairs.

"I've got training with Tasha at S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Ah," and Steve grins, "going to let the Black Widow wipe the floor with you, too?" 

Steve doesn't miss the blush that crawls across Clint's face. "I can hold my own against her," he says defensively.

"Uh-huh." Steve grins. 

"I can!" Then Clint looks thoughtful a moment. "You know, Bucky fights a bit like her."

Steve's grin fades. "Russian training, probably," he says, unable to avoid the flatness in his tone. He pushes open the door out into the foyer.

"Oh. Yeah. Anyway, uh, I should go. You know how Tasha hates to be kept waiting." Clint punches Steve lightly on the shoulder and jogs to the elevator.

"Give her my best," Steve calls after Clint.

When Steve re-enters the apartment, Bucky's sitting on the dining room table, talking on the phone. There's something about him sitting there, barefoot still and feet propped up on the chairs, the easy looseness of his limbs despite the rough sling he's made, that causes a hitch in Steve's step. He completely ignores the various aches and pains and, just for a moment, despite everything that has just happened, allows himself a few indulgent seconds to imagine what things could have been like. 

Imagines he could step into the loose 'v' of Bucky's thighs, pluck the phone from Bucky's hand ("Thanks Tony, but no thanks--no, I don't care what you're selling," because it's Tony that Bucky's talking to, about his busted arm) and toss it away. Haul Bucky in and kiss him thoroughly. Maybe Bucky would hook his ankles behind Steve's legs and pull him closer-- 

Bucky laughs, and that's what takes Steve out of his silly little daydream, Bucky's laugh from across the room and not right in his ear and Steve shakes himself, padding over to the sofa. He doesn't castigate himself for daydreaming things like this and not even from the occasional thought that when he wins Bucky back over--because he will, that's the one thing he can't imagine not happening, a future where they are never friends--they might have a chance. 

About two-point-four seconds after Bucky hangs up the landline, Steve's cell phone buzzes.

"Jesus, Rogers," Tony screams at him, his rage tinny through the phone line. "Do you have any idea how much time I spent getting that arm calibrated  _just right_  for him?"

"Yeah, well," Steve says, in no mood for Tony's histrionics, "you want to build an arm for him, you build something that won't break with a bit of rough and tumble--"

"Rough and tumble? Hawkeye said it looked like the two of you were going to kill each other!"

"You spoke with Clint?" Steve watches Bucky pass through the living room, thoroughly ignoring him. The bedroom door shuts softly behind him.

"He sent me a text! He was worried he was gonna have to try and break the two of you up and was warning me I might need to come in, in the armour! I told him to stay out of it! Look, I know you've got your issues with Bucky at the moment--"

Steve nearly chokes on a laugh. 

"What?  _What_?"

"I'm--I'm not the one with the issues," Steve says, and he suddenly can't seem to stop laughing for some reason, which... this is not funny, it's really not funny, but it's Tony Stark yelling at  _him_  over the phone for being irresponsible and Steve just can't help himself.

"Well, whoever has issues-- _stop laughing_ , Rogers," and Tony growls in irritation and snaps, "Fine! Call me when you've grown up a little!" It's the ridiculousness of that which sets Steve off again.

Steve drops the cell phone onto the sofa beside him, buries his face in his hands and laughs and laughs. He stops when he realises he sounds a little hysterical and the tears in his eyes aren't entirely from laughter. 

His cell phone beeps. The message is from Tony:

 _«Take him to SHIELD. They'll run a scan and tell me what YOU broke.»_

Steve doesn't bother replying, but he knocks on Bucky's door. "Buck? Tony wants me to take you to S.H.I.E.L.D. so we can get your arm fixed."

It turns out that it's not a major problem. One of the bearings was faulty which, despite knowing better, Steve is going to lord over Tony for as long as he can because, as the tech at S.H.I.E.L.D. said, it could have caused a major problem if the bearing housing cracked while Bucky was actually doing something important. 

Steve chooses not to point out that what they were doing that broke the arm in the first place was important in its own way. He doubts the tech would understand. He's not entirely sure he understands it himself. 

Thunder echoes around the bedroom as Steve tries to sleep.

That one was close, he thinks, shifting restlessly. The weather had changed as evening came on and now the air is heavy, sultry with the humidity and promise of rain. A sluggish breeze stirs the curtain and Steve finds his gaze arrested a moment by the billow of material; then another flash of lightning lights up the room, Steve catches a glimpse of movement--a grim figure at the end of the bed, gun raised and trained on Steve, death in his eyes and the lightning a brilliant reflection on his metal arm--and then he's shouting with alarm, falling from the bed, the sharp crack of thunder like a shot ringing in his ears. Another flash and the figure has vanished.

"Steve?" 

The figure might be gone but Bucky's there, in the doorway with his 9mm in hand, up and ready. Another flash of lightning flickers across the room and Steve starts back involuntarily as it reflects off Bucky's arm.

 _The Winter Soldier_. That's who Steve saw.

Bucky lowers the gun when he sees the room is empty. He comes forward, sets the gun down on the table by the bed and hauls Steve to his feet with a hand under his arm. "You okay?" he asks curtly.

"Yeah," Steve says and he lets Bucky help him up. He's embarrassed; he wasn't even asleep, and he's imagining things like... like the Winter Soldier at the foot of his bed ready to kill him. Steve's only in shorts, but Bucky's still dressed, jeans, black t-shirt. Clearly Steve hasn't woken him. 

Dragging the sheet back up with him, Steve sits on the bed. "Sorry," he says, "think I must have had a--" Nightmare? Could he even call it that? 

"Just shut up, Steve." Bucky's fingers press against his shoulder and Steve goes with it, letting himself fall back, drawing his legs back up onto the mattress to lay flat. "Go back to sleep." He tries to imagine that Bucky's fingers linger on his skin, but they don't.

Then Bucky's gone again.

Strangely, it doesn't take Steve long to fall asleep after that and for the first time since New York he doesn't dream. The next morning he wakes feeling rested; the weather's broken, he slept through the rest of the storm, the heavy rain that still wets the window. He yawns, stretches and rolls onto his side. 

He blinks when he sees a gun on the table by the bed, then remembers. Bucky. The Winter Soldier. Lightning on metal. Bucky's fingers on his skin.

God, he wishes Tony hadn't upgraded Bucky's arm yet. Wishes he'd been able to wait just a little longer to get his hands on that Russian technology. 

Steve pushes himself up and reaches for the gun, turning it over it his hands. It's loaded, but the safety is on, and Steve recognises it as the same side-arm Bucky had carried in their escape from New York. How he got it back, Steve has no idea (though he finds out later that it had been included with his own personal gear when it was delivered to the apartment). He brings it with him from the bedroom, sets it on the table for Bucky when he rises. 

It's not a long wait until he does, but Steve doesn't turn when he hears Bucky come into the dining room, doesn't look up from the crossword he's mostly failing at in the paper as he catches the sight of Bucky setting down a coffee cup from the corner of his eye, or when he sees Bucky's fingers linger on the gun. 

Then:

"Here," Bucky says, and sets a stack of notebooks down on the table by Steve's hand. Steve looks up. 

"This is everything I can remember about when I was the Winter Soldier. Training, missions, when they put me in cold storage and when they took me out. This one," he splays his fingers on the top notebook for half a second, before jerking his hand away, "is everything I remember about when they rescued me from the ice, the torture, the... the brainwashing."

He pushes the stack closer to Steve. "It's all in there."

Steve stares at the notebooks, disarmed. That's... not what he expected. But he looks up at Bucky and nods. "Thank you," he says solemnly. "I'll make sure these get put directly into Colonel Fury's hands."

Bucky closes his eyes a moment, lets out a breath and his shoulders sag, like a weight has finally been lifted.

And that's the point when Steve realises that the way Bucky has been acting wasn't about him, and probably hasn't been since not long after they first left the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. Bucky's been caught up in his past, in forcing himself to remember every detail of what he'd been put through to become the Winter Soldier. No wonder every night had been punctuated with nightmares.

Steve feels like a total heel for ever doubting Bucky and for being so self-centred. It was never about him.

"How do you feel?" Steve asks.

"Fried," Bucky admits, sinking down into the chair at right angles to Steve. He can't quite look at the stack of ink stained notebooks with their soft-thumbed pages. "Tell Fury I'll let him know if there's anything I missed."

Steve nods. "I'll do that." He looks at Bucky's hands, carefully folded on the table, stains of ink on his fingers. He tries to think of those hands belonging to the Winter Soldier, but all he can remember is the feel of them gliding over his skin. He coughs softly, and looks away. While now is seriously not the time, Steve still finds it reassuring that even after last night, even after all the reports he's read, he can't imagine Bucky as the Winter Soldier.

"You know... if you wanna read 'em, you can. So you know." 

"Do you  _want_  me to read them?" 

Bucky doesn't answer, and when Steve looks back he's got his elbows propped on the table and his face in his hands. 

Steve scoots his chair closer to the corner of the table (closer to Bucky) and takes a chance reaching out, curving his hand around Bucky's shoulder. "Hey," he says softly. "Hey, it's going to be okay." 

"I'm just so tired," eventually Bucky murmurs, voice muffled against his palms. "I just... I want a night's sleep, but even that's too much." He leans into Steve's touch, turning his face so his cheek touches the back of Steve's fingers and Steve is warmed to his very core by the simplest movement. 

"Did you want me to see if S.H.I.E.L.D. has anything that can--?"

" _No_." Bucky shakes his head sharply. "No drugs. I can't--I just can't."

Steve nods. "I understand." He's tired too, wrung out from worry, from Bucky's nightmares keeping him awake--though he'd never, ever tell Bucky--and from his own nightmares, a cruel blend of the oldest (Bucky falling, over and over, Steve clinging to the door, his serum-enhanced arms still not long enough to reach his best friend as the rail gave way and sometimes he is Bucky, watching himself reach uselessly out as he fell) and the nightmare in between (Bucky going down under the hands of those creatures, blood on his skin, the inhuman look in his eyes as he tried to  _bite_  Steve, desperate for his flesh) and the newest. The Winter Soldier. 

"So, what now? Where is there to go from here?" Steve asks. Where does this leave us, he wants to ask.

He's not sure if Bucky misunderstands the question when he says, "There's nowhere left to go. I don't have anything here in this time, Steve, not like you. No home, no friends. I'm an ex-Soviet assassin, a confirmed criminal, an enemy of the State. Maybe I do deserve to be locked away in some S.H.I.E.L.D. containment facility for the rest of my life."

"No." Steve won't have that at all. "You don't deserve it. And you're not alone. You have me. I know Clint thinks you're pretty much amazing. Stark's particularly fond of anyone he can make into a project. You're not alone, Buck. I don't know anyone who can win people over the way you do. Half the staff from the S.H.I.E.L.D. office think you're the bees knees already. You are definitely still you."

It hurts to see the way Bucky's mouth thins, the tightness in his jaw, like he doesn't believe a word Steve is saying. Steve finishes in a soft tone, "Anyway, you always have a home with me. I need you to know that. All this," and he gestures around the apartment, "Avengers business is important, yeah, but nothing is more important to me than you."

Bucky laughs once, bitterly, and shakes his head. "You're unbelievable, Steve," he says, but without rancour. "If news got out that you even knew me it'd hurt you. You're Captain America and Captain America can't afford a friend like me." 

"I don't care."

"Steve--"

"I  _don't care_." Steve slaps his hand down on the table. "Don't you get it? That you went through all you did at the hands of the Russians, that they made you do those terrible things... that's not you, and I won't let anyone tell me otherwise. Bucky, I know  _you_. I know what kind of man you are, and you are not the man who would do those things. And I'll do everything I can to make sure S.H.I.E.L.D. knows it, too."

Bucky bites his lip. "You're not gonna change your mind about this, are you?"

Steve shakes his head.

"I could run," Bucky warns.

"Yeah? Just you try it."

With a noise of disgust, Bucky slumps back in his chair. "You haven't changed a bit. You're still the most impossible, infuriating man I know."

"Thank you," Steve says and grins.

"It wasn't a compliment."

"I know."

Bucky shakes his head, rolls his eyes, but then... then he's smiling, really  _smiling_  and it takes Steve's breath away. He glances up, meets Steve's gaze and Steve can't help beaming at him like an idiot, feeling like a bridge has been mended, like they are going to be okay. Bucky reaches out and knocks his knuckles against Steve's hand and says, "I'm bad for you, just so you know that," but he's still smiling.

"Haven't you always been?" Steve asks. 

Bucky reaches out, slides the paper from under Steve's hands, picks up his pen and starts working on the crossword Steve had been massacring. It's such a familiar scene, Steve feels his heart clench. He couldn't count the number of mornings they'd sat at the tiny table in their tiny apartment in Brooklyn about a million years ago as Bucky finished the crossword Steve had started.

Although there'd been no gun and no stack of notebooks filled with a bloodstained history then. Steve resolutely doesn't look at either, just watches as Bucky corrects his mistakes, and then goes about systematically answering everything Steve couldn't.

Eventually Bucky hums with satisfaction and pushes the newspaper away, settling back in his seat. Then: "Steve...?" 

"Mm?" Steve freezes in the act of reaching for the paper again. 

"Back... back in New York, you said something." 

"I said a lot of things," Steve says cautiously. 

"No," Bucky says, "you said a specific thing. A very specific thing. You said you... you said how you felt about me. That you were--were in love with me." He crinkles his nose, looking awkward as he pulls his 'I don't want to talk about feelings, but you like talking about feelings which you know I hate but you know I'm going along with it because it's you' face.

Steve swallows. "I did," he says slowly. His heart thumps a sharp triple time in his chest. Why would Bucky bring this up? 

"That was before," Bucky says. He doesn't look at Steve as he speaks, just looks at the pen he's toying with, like it's the most interesting thing in the world. Flips it over and over in his fingers. "Before you knew the truth about me. Who I really am."

" _Was_ ," Steve corrects. 

"...Was. Either way."

"Well... yeah, that's true."

Bucky wets his lips and frowns fiercely at the pen. "I wanna know-- _need_  to know--if... if you've changed your mind now that you know the truth, because..." The pen suddenly flicks out of his fingers, skittering across the table top. Bucky swears, reaches for it again, but Steve can't bear to watch the nervous jitters anymore and pins Bucky's hand to the tabletop. 

It seems the more agitated Bucky becomes, the calmer Steve is in response. "Because why, Buck?"

Bucky flicks Steve an unreadable glance as his words come out in a rush. "Because... because I think I'm--I think I might be... the same... with you, and I need to know if you still want me--this...? us...?--because I think I'm gonna do something stupid and I'd prefer to know beforehand than find out you're not--that you don't, y'know, anymore because... well... my history."

"Oh. Uh." Steve sits back in his chair, blinking. It takes him a moment to process what Bucky's said, and then when he does he says, " _Oh_!" in a useless, shocked tone. 

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything," Bucky says and he's flushed pink across his cheeks, endearingly so because it's so rare, but then he shoots to his feet and tries to flee, which... no. Steve can't have him running out now. Won't have it. He gets up too, grabs Bucky by the arm and tugs him back around, cups his face and kisses him hard. Bucky goes rigid at first, before relaxing, his hands coming up to grip at Steve's shirt. He leans into the kiss and Steve sighs when he feels the touch of Bucky's tongue to his lips and parts them. Bucky licks into his mouth and then reaches up, curling his arm around Steve's neck the way Steve remembers. 

When Steve shifts his hands, sliding them down Bucky's back to his hips, Bucky presses against him, making a soft, pleased noise into Steve's mouth.

"What if I did something stupid first?" Steve finally asks, when they part, his heart thundering in his chest.

Bucky's eyes are dark with desire when he looks up at Steve. "That'd work, too," he says. 

He kisses Steve again then, other arm wrapped around Steve's body, fingers digging into Steve's back. This time when they part Bucky speaks first, asking, "Too soon to move this to the bedroom?"

Steve swallows and, not trusting his voice in the slightest, shakes his head. Then, just in case Bucky might have misinterpreted his head shake, he manhandles Bucky through the apartment to the master bedroom. 

With a smirk at Steve's eagerness, Bucky breaks away to strip off his t-shirt, slowly unbuttoning his jeans and peeling them off. Like before, he doesn't waste time wearing underwear and it's still one of the hottest things Steve's ever considered. And then Steve's out of his own clothes in less time than he would have thought possible, pushing Bucky down on the bed and slithering over him. 

Steve wants to make Bucky completely lose control this time. He curls his fingers around Bucky's cock and Bucky arches up into his hand, a soft whine torn from his lips. "You like that?"

"Fuck you, you know I do," Bucky gasps. 

"What do you want?" 

Bucky looks up at Steve from heavy-lidded eyes. He licks his lips, slow and deliberate and waits for Steve's gaze to meet his again before he speaks. "Want you inside me. Want you to fuck me."

"I--" Steve stops, swallows then lets out his breath slowly. Not what he expected. God, he wants it though, he's even dreamt about it, waking up sweat-slick and messy in the sheets at the thought.

He pulls away a moment and reaches for the drawer by the bed. There's lube there, he found it the first night when investigating (not because Tony Stark is an asshole who thought Steve was going to fuck his best friend, but because Tony Stark is an asshole who would have prepared this place for his  _own_  debauchery, long before leasing the place back to S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Steve rolls them, sliding his hand from Bucky's cock to his thigh, catching Bucky's leg with his fingers and hauling him even closer, flicking the cap off the lube with his other hand. The rock of Bucky's hips, the slide of his cock against Steve's skin distracts Steve a moment and he presses his mouth to Bucky's throat, then against his jaw, then kisses him deeply. Bucky's fingers tangle in his hair as he arches up; God, he's so responsive, it's beautiful. He's beautiful. 

Eventually Steve manages to slop some lube on his fingers, coating his cock. He reaches down to slick Bucky then hesitates. "I've never--" he says, suddenly mortified. 

But Bucky just smiles. "It's okay." He guides Steve's hand down, presses Steve's fingertips against him,  _into him_ , and Steve... oh, well Steve has it from there, fucking Bucky with his fingers; but there's something so hot about the feel of Bucky's hand around his as Steve does it, the way Bucky fucks himself onto Steve's fingers even as he fucks himself with them.

"Now," Bucky says roughly, "I want  _you_."

Once Steve replaces his fingers with the fullness of his cock (slowly pushing into Bucky, feeling the resistance a moment then--oh god) he holds still, breathing slowly. Bucky tightens his thighs around Steve a moment and smirks when Steve inhales sharply. Ducking his head, Steve thoroughly kisses the smirk right off his face. When Steve starts to thrust, Bucky lets out a hum of pleasure. "You like that?" Steve murmurs.

"Like it more if you'd fuck me harder," Bucky says giving Steve that familiar, challenging look. It's so ridiculously hot right now that Steve's not sure he'll ever be able to see it again without thinking of _this_.

Shaking his head, Steve nips at Bucky's bottom lip. "We go at my pace, Buck," he says, and his pace is the slowest, most leisurely fuck he's ever had. It's not easy for him, either, but the way it drives Bucky mad is worth every single moment of the flipside need to fuck Bucky hard.

"Come on, Steve," Bucky groans, trying to rock up against Steve, "need you to fuck me."

"How much?" Steve whispers, right in his ear. "Tell me how much."

Bucky lets out a string of expletives, finishing with, " _Like nothing else_ , you little punk."

And that's when Steve fucks him hard like he wants, losing himself in the movement of his cock in Bucky's body, the slick of wet skin on wet skin, the wordless noises Bucky makes. Bucky's fingers digging into Steve's shoulders as he mindlessly seeks out Steve's mouth and they kiss messily around the gasps and the moans. Steve's orgasm hits him like a freight train, hips jerking as he empties himself into Bucky, bowed over him with wet, open mouthed gasps. He's barely finished coming before he's fumbling for Bucky's cock with his still slippery hand, because all he can think about is how much he wants Bucky to come while still inside him.

"Oh fuck Steve, that's so hot, I don't..." Bucky says and that's when Steve realises he's said it aloud. 

He repeats the words raggedly, says, "Come on, Buck, come while I'm in you," and that's all it takes before Bucky comes apart at the seams, his come spilling wet all over Steve's fingers and belly. He slumps back against the mattress, still panting, then reaches up and touches Steve's face with no finesse. Steve smiles against Bucky's palm.

Eventually they have to separate and Steve lets out a soft, involuntary noise of loss as he slides out of Bucky's body. "S'okay," Bucky says, curling on his side, reaching out and trailing his fingers through the sticky wetness on Steve's belly. He unselfconsciously licks his finger clean and Steve exhales heavily, because that is unexpectedly hot. "Give me a coupla moments to recover, then we can go for round two."

Even though Steve's super-soldier body gives him a stupidly short refractory period, even he's not quite ready yet. Though if Bucky keeps licking his fingers like that... He closes his eyes a moment and force-redirects his thoughts because there's something else just a little more pressing he needs to know.

"So, you... love me?" he asks, a little hesitantly, because even though they've just fucked, it's still possible that he could've misheard, could've misinterpreted Bucky's garbled words. It's not like he explicitly said it, after all. Steve could, horribly, be  _wrong_.

Except. 

Bucky runs his hand lightly down Steve's spine and Steve closes his eyes a moment, breathing slowly, letting himself enjoy the simple touch. He could get very used to this, very quickly. Then Bucky presses his mouth to Steve's shoulder. "Yeah," Bucky says and Steve can feel Bucky's smile against his skin. "God knows why, but I do."

-

"We need you to go back to New York on a stealth mission," Fury says. "It'll just be the pair of you."

The call to come in to S.H.I.E.L.D. had come sometime after midnight, not long after Steve had fallen asleep, Bucky warm up against his back, arm hooked limply around Steve's waist. 

Steve looks at Bucky, but Bucky's eyes don't shift from Fury's face at all. "Why me? You don't trust me."

Fury's mouth thins for a moment. "No, I don't. But you're all I've got at the moment, and I'm gonna use what I've got. Besides, I've... read these," he places a hand on the notebooks Steve had managed to drag himself away from Bucky for long enough to deliver earlier in the day, "and you've both got experience within a quarantine zone that the rest of the team doesn't have." He turns his gaze to Steve. "You say he's reliable, Cap? Well, this is his chance to prove it."

Straightening his shoulders, Steve raises his chin. "I will stake my reputation on it," he says in his best pompous Captain America voice and hears Bucky huff a soft laugh. Steve flicks a glare at him. 

"Of course you will," Fury says mildly, but there's a twinkle of almost malicious humour in his eyes. "Gentlemen, I've heard all kinds of stories about how Captain America and Bucky used to fight together during the war. I look forward to seeing how Captain America and the Winter Soldier fight together now." 

Steve inhales sharply and looks at Bucky. The humour is gone now; Bucky closes his eyes a moment, his jaw tight.  _The Winter Soldier._

Then he opens his eyes and smiles. "All right," he says, "let's do this."

  
 **END.**

**Author's Note:**

> Timestamp!fic (six months later): [Epicentre](http://archiveofourown.org/works/473852).


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